5 Black Women Were Told to Golf Faster. Then the Club Called the Police.

 

(photo credit: Myneca Ojo, via Facebook) 

(New York Times) – What started out as a relaxing day at a Pennsylvania golf course turned into an ugly confrontation between the white men who run the club and five black women who were playing there.

It had echoes of other recent incidents, at a Starbucks in Philadelphia and a Waffle House in Alabama, in which black customers found themselves in racially charged disputes. Once again, the police were summoned. Once again, a video spread widely on social media and drew national attention.

On Saturday in a largely white suburban community in Dover Township, York County, the women began playing at Grandview Golf Club before being told that they were moving too slowly…

(Read more)

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A disturbing yet nonetheless relevant aspect to this story is that police were called. It was a seemingly disproportionate reaction to a nonviolent disagreement over an organizational policy, not a criminal act. Fueled by bias and other factors, systemic oppression perpetuates conditions through which patterns of race and gender discrimination, as well as other forms of identity discrimination persist. Diversity climate studies are an essential step in understanding the inherent strengths an organization has on diversity issues and how those strengths can be leveraged to make further improvements.

Learn more…

Men Are Responsible for Mass Shootings

(From harpersbazaar.com) — Shootings, whether they’re in Parkland, Orlando, Las Vegas or Sutherland Springs, all tend have one thing in common. It’s not that they’re done by mentally ill people (there is no true connection between people with a mental health diagnosis and mass shootings, according to experts), or that they’re…

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Discrimination against persons with a disability is an age old problem. The latest cascade of scapegoating them involve the mass shootings happening across our country. In fact, persons with a mental disability are no more likely to be violent than nondisabled people. Yet society engages regularly in knee-jerk blaming of violent actions as a mental health issue – particularly when the perpetrator is a white male. This false narrative fuels oppressive ways of thinking about mental health and those with disabilities.

Click here to learn more about systemic oppression, how to recognize it, how it affects us, and how to interrupt it.

Racism and Intolerance Alive and Well Among Our Youth

 

                      (Credit: Noe Hernandez/Battle Creek Enquirer)

(From the Battle Creek Enquirer) — Audra Granger says her 15-year-old son was harassed, cyber bullied and assaulted twice by his Harper Creek High School classmates for taking a stand against hatred toward black people. It got bad enough that, within about a week, she transferred him…

To read more click here

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This story illustrates just how much racism continues to permeate our society. Even as the United States continues to coalesce into a blended society, in too many regions and communities, the scourge of oppression remains unacceptably high. Youth are especially susceptible – both as oppressors and the oppressed. That’s because of a sore lack of perspective; they just don’t know this nation’s complete, unvarnished history. Learn more about racial oppression and what you can do about it at Beyond Diversity.

Women Cite a History of Sexism in State Capitol

“When our population is much more than 10 percent, why do we have only 10 percent of the senators as women?” — Sen. Margaret O’Brien, R-Portage, Mich.

(From Deadline Detroit) — With females accounting for more than half the population, oppressive acts of sexism remains a persistent issue among state legislatures. At its center is the stereotyping of gender roles and according to many, it’s not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue.

(To read more, click here.)

 

 

Stand-Up Comedy And Mental Illness

David Haglund, a senior editor at Slate who runs Brow Beat, Slate‘s culture blog, interviewed Maria Bamford and spoke about her ability as a stand-up comedienne to “engage with questions of mental health in a way that’s serious and thoughtful as well as really funny.” To read more, click here.

Ask a Woman Who Uses a Wheelchair

Ask A Woman Who Uses A Wheelchair

Ableism is prejudice against people with disabilities, and like every other -ism, can take on many gnarly forms. Whether it’s negative societal attitudes, the dearth of accessible housing, job discrimination, or targeting an individual for a crime, in her post on The Harirpin blog Caitlin Wood speaks frankly about aspects of ableism. To read more, click here.

The Constant Foreigner

What is it like to constantly be asked, “Where are you from?” and treated as if you’re not from the United States? A blogger of Chinese and Jamaican ancestry answers that question in a provocative account of a restaurant conversation in Monteagle, Tennessee. Click here to read the article.

Microaggressions Blog

Microaggressions are brief and commonplace verbal, behavioral, or environmental indignities—whether intentional or unintentional—that communicate hostile attitudes, slights, or insults toward members of marginalized groups, including people of color, women, and members of the LGBTI community. The Microagressions blog collects and publishes reader-submitted descriptions of microaggressions and the impact the microaggressions had on the people who endured them.  Here are two examples:

Look at her. That’s no fair. Why do I have to walk? She’s taking advantage.

—I’m a wheelchair user in a large museum. I felt like my struggles with accessibility were nothing and the young, able-bodied man who said this expected pity.

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Excuse me, do you speak English?

—Man at the bus stop. I am an Asian American woman. I was reading Jane Austen. In English.

To read the many posts on the blog and perhaps to submit your own, click here.

The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck

This personal narrative from the Shakesville blog offers insights about the way sexism affects everyday life for women and dampens their ability to easily trust men. The article strikes a chord with the experiences of other marginalized groups  like people of color and persons with disabilities.  To read The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck by Melissa McEwan, the founder of Shakesville, click here.

Microaggresions: More Than Just Race

This is an interesting article about the way microaggressions affect people in their everyday lives. Click here to go to the article.