The bad blood between medical science and Black Americans is deeply rooted in the white supremacy that has shaped this country and its subjugation of Black bodies.
Month: April 2021
Piece 41: Respectability
Why do you think that the names of Pauli Murray, a gender queer woman, and Claudette Colvin, a teenage mother, are not taught to us alongside the name of Rosa Parks, even though all three were civilly disobedient in the same way?
In what ways might respectability politics have influenced your idea of which Black lives matter and which ones don’t?
Piece 40: One Day, When the Glory Comes
As theologian James Cone states in The Cross and the Lynching Tree, “Without concrete signs of divine presence in the lives of the poor, the gospel becomes simply an opiate; rather than liberating the powerless from humiliation and suffering, the gospel becomes a drug that helps them adjust to this world by looking for “pie in the sky.”
Piece 39: The Other Side of Freedom
Whatever our religious or personal beliefs, it seems clear that hope is active and that the goal of freedom requires the work of love.
Piece 38: We Don’t Say Their Names Enough
How, in all our culture’s popular representations of Rosies’ contributions to the war effort by taking over men’s jobs back home, have Black women escaped recognition?