Half-Century Legacy: Investigating The FBI’s Criminalization Of MLK
While in modern years Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has been unanimously praised as a valiant and proud public leader, this has not always been the case. Dr. King has touched thousands of lives with his poetic words and heroic yet nonviolent actions, with activists and philosophers in the generations since his death adopting his mantras and doctrines and using them as their own personal guidance through life. This is unassailable in the aftermath and
The Stephon Clark Shooting And Why It Still Hurts
As a person of color in America, hearing about a police shooting incident obviously impacts me negatively. While I’ve never personally had something like this impact me personally, emotions always fly high when it comes to the subject because it could be any number of people that I know and care about. Those emotions reactivated themselves when I heard about the shooting of Stephon Clark. In Sacramento California last Sunday, Sherrif’s responded to a call about
National Geographic Admits Past Racist Coverage and Promises to Do Better
In a powerful new issue revolving around race, National Geographic recognized its history with racist and culturally insensitive news coverage. The April issue is set to hit stands March 27, but their online content has since garnered attention over a particular confession that the company made. For the magazine issue, editor-in-chief Susan Goldberg writes about the experience of hiring a historian to study past National Geographic articles and issues and determine if racism was prevalent.
The Flaws of Our Criminal Justice System
They say lady justice is blind, for her blindfold represents objectivity, the ability to allocate justice without the fright of bribe, without the influence of money, wealth, power and identity. But is my justice a reflection of lady justice’s virtues? A while ago I was reading a Maclean’s article which compared Canada’s prisons to residential schools. It truly pointed out some of the more astonishing statistics regarding the unfair treatment of indigenous people on their own land. Even
The Truth About Discrimination in the College Admissions Process
In 2015, 64 Asian-American groups filed a complaint against Harvard University for what they claimed to be discrimination in the college admissions process. Some may argue that the groups are simply creating a rationale for getting rejected from the institution, but the numbers don’t lie. Many of the enraged previous Asian-American applicants sported nearly perfect SAT scores, played multiple instruments, were named captains of their sports teams and participated in numerous extracurricular activities. With such a resume, one
Slavery Never Ended, It Just Got a New Name
Those who live in America are well aware of the history of slavery– how it shaped the country economically and socially into what it is today. Yet, slavery never ended. This may have been highlighted by the slave trade in Libya where African migrants and refugees have been sold in inhumane conditions by their captors. As surprising as it may sound, this is not unusual. Slavery is still very active, and not just in countries that
Why We Need to Rebrand Black Communities
The world is an uneven playing field, especially for African Americans. Many problems undermine their human rights: Voter ID laws, underfunded education and excessive policing are some examples. However, those issues can be solved with public policy. What cannot be undone is the steep psychological damage of overt and subtle racism. When raised in an impoverished environment, black youth internalize the stigma. We could go back to the 1940s for this point when psychologists Kenneth
Happy 23rd Birthday Trayvon Martin: A Look Back On A Lost Life
On February 26th, 2012, unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer. Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Fl. He was walking back to his father’s house, who he was visiting, after buying a pack of skittles and iced tea. Zimmerman spotted the teen and reported that he saw a “suspicious guy”. He was told “not to get out of his car and follow Martin”, yet Zimmerman did
Uyghur Muslims Placed in Chinese Camps
The Uyghurs are an indigenous people who live in the western region of China known as Xinjiang. They are currently a minority in the population, and many people have been imprisoned as the Uyghurs are often falsely accused of committing acts of terrorism. Omer Kanat, executive committee chairman of the World Uyghur Congress stated, “Every household, every family had three or four people taken away.” What leads to this startling piece of information is that
The Story of Stunning Corruption in Baltimore’s Police Department
The police department responsible for the suspicious death of Freddie Gray in 2015 is in the midst of a startling corruption case. It began in 2011, when a 19-year-old woman overdosed in Harford County, Maryland and authorities traced the drugs back to a Northeast Baltimore drug crew. During their investigation, authorities found that a Baltimore police officer was actively involved with this crew. This led to the group of officers at the center of the scandal: