Author's Note: This Week's 5 is a weekly collection of stories designed to provide insight into how racism works and serve as an easily accessible resource for people trying to have nuanced discussions about these issues. For more explanation on how This Week's 5 works and descriptions of each of the categories, click here.
Overt: Looking for an easy character test? When fliers go up not just calling for attacks on Muslims, but making it into a game complete with a points system, if someone still tells you that there isn't an Islamophobia problem, you are dealing with a bad actor. To read more about the Islamophobic fliers, check out this article from BBC.
Institutional: How much impact can adding one question about citizenship to the census have? It turns out, by incentivizing non-citizens (i.e. disproportionately undocumented immigrants of color) not to respond to the census, you can create an excuse for decreasing both the amount of federal resources that go to the areas where they live and the number elected officials that represent these areas. Learn more about how this works in this article from CNN.
Critical Race Theory: Cultural appropriation has been a hot topic as of late and while theoretical discussions can get murky, pictures have an uncanny way of making it clear as day. In this case, a Miccosukee activist decided to take selfies with everyone wearing Indian headdresses at a popular music festival and, while technically more of a collection of photos, the barrage of lack of self-awareness definitely hits your eyes like a collage (and makes for a better title for This Week's 5). Read more from the Miami New Times.
History: The legacy of school desegregation is a complicated one. From a legal standpoint, making separate but unequal schools unconstitutional was obvious. However, in practice, and more importantly, with white people making all the decisions, desegregation resulted in the closing down of mostly Black schools, firing of mostly Black teachers, and dispersal of Black students into hostile, predominantly white environments without anywhere close to an equal burden being placed on their white counterparts. Brown v. Board of Education set that chapter of American history in motion and Linda Brown, who passed away earlier this week, became the poster child. RIP. To learn more, read this article from The Root.
The Fragility Breaker: In this week's edition of "Yes, we see you. Please stop," we examine performative mourning. Sometimes it's not about saying the right thing at the perfect time. Sometimes (see: almost all of the time) it's not about you at all. Read more from Blavity.
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