While reparations are typically linked to slavery or historic discrimination, contemporations focus on contemporary discrimination. With contemporations, there is no need to determine the responsible parties’ intention, only the impact of their decisions and actions on community and personal wealth.
race and ethnicity
Posted inOpinion
Fight racism, pause development on public land in Roxbury
CITY OFFICIALS deliberately designed Boston to separate the Black community and prevent it from taking advantage of the economic success Boston has seen. Nowhere is this more more evident than in Roxbury, which is 50 percent Black and 11 percent White, compared with wealthy Back Bay, which is 73 percent White and 4 percent Black. Roxbury […]
Posted inOpinion
Jackson’s stand against ‘colorblind’ Constitution
IN HER celebrated exchange with Alabama’s Solicitor General, the newest Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, eviscerated his argument that our Constitution is and should be “colorblind.” Rather, she declared, the intent of those who framed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments was to be “color conscious” in safeguarding the civil liberties of the 4 million enslaved Blacks freed by […]
Posted inRace/Racism
Baker signs law banning hairstyle discrimination
GOV. CHARLIE BAKER on Tuesday signed the CROWN Act into law, making Massachusetts the 18th state to ban discrimination based on “natural hairstyles.” The governor held a joyous bill signing ceremony in his office, surrounded by advocates and lawmakers, the first such ceremony in his office since before the pandemic. The bill was prompted in […]
Posted inThe Download
Black girls disciplined in school more often than Whites
In the last normal school year before the pandemic, Black girls in Massachusetts were disciplined in school at more than three times the rate of white girls. Often, Black girls say, they are punished for the same offenses for which white students are not. Melanie Rush, director of research and policy at the Massachusetts Appleseed […]
Posted inEducation
Black girls disciplined in school more often than Whites
IN THE LAST normal school year before the pandemic, Black girls in Massachusetts were disciplined in school at more than three times the rate of white girls. Often, Black girls say, they are punished for the same offenses for which white students are not. Melanie Rush, director of research and policy at the Massachusetts Appleseed […]
Posted inOpinion
State not living up to environmental justice responsibilities
JUST OVER A YEAR after Gov. Charlie Baker signed “An Act Creating a Next-Generation Roadmap for Massachusetts Climate Policy,” which contained protections for environmental justice populations, the state has found itself roiled in controversy for sacrificing the health and well-being of those very same, protected populations. Investigative reporting revealed that the Massachusetts Department of Transportation […]
Posted inOpinion, Race/Racism
Juneteenth a chance for new customs and rituals
TWO YEARS AFTER George Floyd and just days after the final victims of last month’s racial murders in Buffalo, it’s hard not to reflect on America’s long and painful history of racism and hate. Incidents like New York City Draft Riots of 1863, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church […]
Posted inRace/Racism
House votes to ban hairstyle discrimination
IN 2017, Mya and Deanna Cook, 15-year-old twins, were disciplined because they wore box braids to school at Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden. Box braids and other protective hairstyles are commonly used by Black women who have textured hair to keep their hair healthy by limiting its exposure to sun, weather, or constant […]
Posted inOpinion
Why Boston should pursue reparations
ON JUNE 9, 2021 Boston City Councilors Julia Mejia and Kenzie Bok submitted an order calling for “a hearing on reparations and their impact on the civil rights of Black Bostonians, in order to both form a common, shared history regarding Boston’s involvement in the enslavement of Black people as well as to explore the […]