The Emancipator

Culture | Monica Russel y Rodriguez

Lessons learned as a DEI plumber

The hope of a diversity, equity, and inclusion office is to build something better, but often staff are stuck patching constant leaks in old, flawed institutions. And it’s draining work.

Video | Shermann “Dilla” Thomas
Community Health Equity Tour
Family, heritage, and community all play a powerful role in maintaining the health and wellness of a city’s residents. Our health equity tour of Chicago’s Little Village shows a neighborhood emblematic of these ideas. Next up: Durham, North Carolina.

Video | Ibram X. Kendi
Talking to your kids about race
What are we saying to our kids about race even when we don’t say anything? Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, explains how it is a false choice whether or not to teach your young child about race, because, either way, they’re picking up on your attitude about race.

Education | Jaclyn Friedman
‘Parents’ rights’ as a red herring
The common thread through grievances around masking, vaccines, CRT, and trans kids in sports is clear: this astroturf movement wants to “defund government education.”

Video | Peniel Joseph
On Reckonings, Reimagining, and The Third Reconstruction
Acclaimed historians Ibram X. Kendi and Peniel Joseph joined to discuss Joseph’s latest work, “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.”⁠

VIDEO | William Horne
We’ve Been Here Before: Insurrections and White Supremacy
As we remember and assess the damage of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection on America today, it’s valuable to take a hard look at the impact and consequences that white conservative election denialism played in our shared history.

Culture | Phillipe Copeland
The art of the denial
Racism denial is a political strategy and a coping tool, used by those who benefit from racism and those unwilling to confront the dire contradictions in our society. Phillipe Copeland walks us through its different forms so we can recognize and counter them.

Video | Deborah D. Douglas
What’s next for the White Lives Matter trademark?
Now that podcasters Ramses Ja and Q Ward own the White Lives Matter trademark, what do these long-time social justice supporters plan to do with the power that comes with ownership?

Throughline | Jeffrey Boutwell
Time for a New Emancipation Proclamation
The dynamics of how best to maximize Black voting power remain the same as they were on Great Emancipation Day 1903 when William Monroe Trotter and former Massachusetts Gov. George S. Boutwell, an architect of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th and 15th amendments, called for a New Emancipation Proclamation.

Year-in-review
Justice Dictionary 2022
To tackle pressing social problems, we first need the language to describe them. Here are concepts and takeaways amplified this year by contributors to The Emancipator.

Throughline | Jeff Inglis
U.S. military to stop honoring Confederate history — finally
The Naming Commission's goal is to remove all official commemorations of the Confederacy, which Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has called “an act of rebellion. It was an act of treason.”

Throughline | Kimberly Atkins Stohr
Jan. 6 committee leaves crucial lessons about race unspoken
The most striking thing about Monday’s final public meeting of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol was what wasn’t said.

The Big Picture | Spencer Piston
Reimagining the police
Jacqueline Kung joined Cambridge HEART after witnessing a neighbor handcuffed and detained after his mother died. The Massachusetts-based mutual aid group is a kind of citizen-driven alternative to traditional policing, though activists worry these approaches will be watered down by government officials.

The Big Picture | Brandon Hasbrouck
Overpolicing breaks Black and Brown communities. What can we build instead?
We need to reimagine so-called ‘public safety’ practices which protect wealthy White communities, while overpolicing Black and Brown ones.

The Big Picture | Neda Khoshkhoo and Jasmine Gonzales Rose
Yes, filling out race on forms is tiresome. Here’s why it matters.
Completing a race questionnaire can be tiring, intrusive, or even inaccurate, but the data they collect are necessary for understanding how racism operates, how resources are distributed, and how different racial and ethnic groups experience benefits or harms.

Video | Monica Wang
Why racism is a public health crisis
Dr. Monica Wang breaks down a U.C. Berkeley study linking racism in a community to higher risk of heart disease deaths among both Black and White members of the community.

Education | Olivia Poulin
It’s time to end catch-up culture in American schools
The COVID-19 pandemic gave us an opportunity to reimagine learning. The late bell hooks, author of “Teaching to Transgress,” laid the groundwork for an education system that fully supports student growth and teacher well-being.

Health | V. Jo Hsu
We might be over the pandemic, but it’s not over us
We cannot abandon millions plagued by long COVID, whose symptoms can include difficulty breathing, cognitive dysfunction, and fatigue that interferes with everyday activity — disproportionately hurting marginalized people.

Culture | Audra Simpson
Indigenous identity theft must stop
Once again, a scholar vaulted to a position of power and influence through a claimed Indigenous descent has been revealed to be a White woman. The overdue embrace of Native voices is being co-opted while real Native women still suffer, facing a disproportionate number of murders and disappearances.

Throughline | Paul Lewis
Poetry and the struggle for justice
Early American abolitionists used the storytelling artistry of poetry as a way to dismantle White supremacist thinking. Paul Lewis dissects an 1820 poem published in the original Emancipator called “Far in a gloomy desart, waste and wild.”

The Big Picture | Phillipe Copeland
Call ‘tough on crime’ what it is: a tool of racial oligarchy
Conservatives and liberals alike embrace a “law and order” framework, which blames reformers, the poor, and the unhoused for concerns about crime, and enforces rule based on wealth and racism. We need to build a better future.

Throughline | Jemar Tisby
Faith on the ballot: White Christian nationalism vs. Black Christian tradition
Two races in Arkansas and Georgia embody two American political traditions: One which uses faith to uphold White nationalism, and one that dismantles it.

The Big Picture | Xavier de Souza Briggs and Saru Jayaraman
The fight to end a little-known legacy of slavery is at a tipping point
Modern tipping has been used since Reconstruction to justify poverty wages for service workers, especially Black women. But as more states decide to ditch subminimum wages, voters in Portland, Maine, have the chance to say enough is enough.

THE TALK | VIDEO
A letter to my White sons
Joanna Schroeder on the talk she has with her White sons breaking down the red flags of White nationalism.

Comics | Joel Christian Gill
Everything’s Racist Comic: Guns
Artist Joel Christian Gill reveals the difficult history behind everything.

The Big Picture | Jonathan Feingold and Vinay Harpalani
The party attacking affirmative action just made the case for it
The anti-Asian bias in Harvard's admissions only helps White applicants, as do legacy, athlete, and Dean's List admissions. We need more affirmative action, not an end to it, and the plaintiff’s own data make that clear.

Kimberly Atkins Stohr
Affirmative action in college admissions is at risk
The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority is poised to close doors to access, equity, and diversity, but there are others that can be opened.

The Big Picture | Lina Saleh and Adaeze Okorie
Enter the Other Swing Voter: the mighty 8%
Two young Black voters at Boston University share their message for the “Other Swing Voter” – those who swing between voting Democratic or not at all, most likely to be young and Black or young and Latino.

The Big Picture | Lora-Ellen McKinney
My first abortion occurred at age 11. Then there were the others.
Lora-Ellen McKinney has never been pregnant. With an extremely rare genetic connective tissue disorder, her life was saved by abortion care.

The Big Picture | Kimberly Atkins Stohr
Jackson, Kagan, and Sotomayor aren’t letting the Supreme Court go down without a fight
Steamrolled by a right-wing majority twice their size, the liberal bloc is wielding words as weapons to expose the danger of the conservative legal agenda.

The Big Picture | Xavier de Souza Briggs, Andre Perry, Darrick Hamilton, and Rick McGahey
To keep promises of achieving racial equity, let’s start keeping score
We already score proposed legislation for its cost to taxpayers, and we require environmental impact assessments for many major projects. If we value racial inclusion and equity, then we should measure it, score it, and hold leaders accountable for how well it is achieved through government action.

Black Progress Index | Andre M. Perry
What’s going right about Black life? The Black Progress Index tells us what, where, and how
We assembled data from as many U.S. counties as possible to identify the strongest predictors of well-being, with life expectancy as the primary measure. The index analyzes these places and more.

HEALTH | Katherine Standish and Afi Semenya
Paying attention: Boston hospital helps breastfeeding Black moms, babies thrive
Many healthcare interventions can help families successfully breastfeed and address compelling evidence of racist structures that perpetuate the vicious cycle of health inequities.

BOOKS | CHRISTOPHER RIVAS
In the alchemy of Brownness, taking up space should not be a radical act
Author Christopher Rivas explores living beyond the Black/White binary to reclaim the middle ground of race, ethnicity, and identity.

The Talk | Kristen Pope
Lily’s big hair day
For the last year of pre-kindergarten, my daughter, Lily, has thrived as the only Black child in her entire school, where her teachers and school administrators love her, care for her, and support her. But there have been some bumps that mostly involved race; one instance was related to her hair.

The Talk | Nick Martin
The Talk: A dual reality for Native kids
This unprecedented moment of representation exists in the same reality wherein you still go to a nontribal school and have to sit in a classroom and listen to social studies teachers turn our genocide into a “necessary” evil of progress — if it’s framed as an evil at all.

The Talk | Rebecca Cokley
Pointing out meaningful representation for children with disabilities
We train our kids to know the difference between genuine friendship, tokenization, and inspiration porn.

The Talk | Amber Payne and Deborah D. Douglas
The Talk: How identity shapes the way we keep our children safe
Depending on who you are and how you live, this conversation can go a lot of ways.

Education | Kimi Waite
The great resisters of Japanese American history have a powerful story to tell
History shows us Asian Americans have consistently engaged in resistance against injustices by challenging systemic racism as far back as 1879, but ongoing anti-critical race theory campaigns and backlash from the far right demonstrate the struggle for an antiracist education continues.

Education | Kimberly Atkins Stohr
Biden’s student loan debt relief isn’t just fair, it’s a good first start
There is a reason White parents pay much more tuition or student loans as Black parents: Because they can.

Changemakers
These voting rights heroes are fighting for your rights
Across the country, people are mobilizing to stop these attacks on our democracy. Meet some of the changemakers working to protect our vote.

Changemakers
How new voting laws may affect you
The Emancipator is here to help you understand what voting laws mean and how to prepare. From registration deadlines to requesting mail-in ballots to voting in-person, VoteChat has the answers.