#causeascene

“Na-na-na-na-no Boo Boo. If you’re a good person then you need to understand exactly what your white ness means. And you need to understand what kind of harm that it has caused and continues to cause on a daily basis, no matter how woke and good you think you are.” Dr. Tiffany Jana […]

“People of color, people from a low-income background get into this much debt going to a school thinking, this is my way into the tech industry, this is my way out of poverty, this is my way to help take care of my family or help care for my parents, and then they […]

“There’s a disconnect between beliefs and behavior. And there’s an investment in the symbolism of one’s beliefs and translating that as if it represents behavior when it doesn’t.” Dr. Courtney D. Cogburn is an associate professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work and faculty of the Columbia Population Research Center. She […]

“I think many folks on the Left…don’t really understand what is a system of oppression. I think they view racism that is some sort of personal indictment on an individual’s character rather than the reality that it is, which is a system that has existed since the very founding of this nation. It […]

Survival  Homework Ask yourself, what are you willing to do in the service of antiracism? Transcription 00:10 OK everyone, welcome to today’s episode of the #CauseAScene Podcast Book Club episode of “How to be an Antiracist” Chapter 18: “Survival”. We’re at the end of this book. It took us a minute, but we […]

“I want every US presidential candidate…to give me a list of what they are going to in order to address institutionalized racism. I want to know what regulations, I want to know the policies, I want to know the data. And I want to be able to review your plan. Give me a […]

Success Homework Page 222: “Toure and Hamilton could not have foreseen how their concepts of overt and covert racism would be used by people across the ideological board to turn racism into something hidden and unknowable.” How does this statement parallel how the academic work of Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” is being used […]

“When I go in and I’m working with companies, I tell them you have got to design your systems, your culture, your norms, your communication for the most marginalized person. If she’s okay, then the rest of the people in your company are going to be okay.” For 25 years, Nicole Sanchez has […]

Failure Activist: One who has a record of power or policy change. Homework Page 204: Identify and evaluate current policies that hold Blacks responsible for the racist ideas and beliefs of whitenesss. Page 207: How would your “activism” change if you accepted and internalized that whiteness is NOT racist due to a lack […]

“When I think about the role of technical systems…the inequity becomes even more encoded, subtle and it may seem like it’s operating where race is not explicit…The designers are not taking explicit note of race and yet racial disparities are being reproduced.” Ruha Benjamin is Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, founder of […]