Month: August 2015

August 27, 2015

Women’s Equality Day: 95 Years Ago Women Were Granted The Right To Vote, Today Women Of Color Are An Extremely Important Voting Bloc

ERA words button

The ERA: Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution First introduced by Alice Paul in 1923 after women were given the right to vote in the US Constitution in 1920. It needs three more state to ratify it before will be included fully recognized in our Constitution.

Women were granted the right to vote 95 years ago. We are still waiting for passage of the Equal Right  Amendment that was first introduced in 1923. Meanwhile here’s some info on the positive impact of what the 19th Amendment did for women, particularly women of color.

the word '"racism" embedded in circle with a slash through it.
August 19, 2015

Racial Lenses

the word '

End Racism Now

White privilege.  It’s a system that is embedded in our culture “to overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one’s race [white/Caucasian] or sex [male]”.

In looking and thinking about white privilege, I periodically read other civil rights bloggers to see what that have to say on the issue of white privilege, racial inequities, and how people of all races and ethnicities view the world.  One of these bloggers had a link to a new person [to me]; Glenn Robinson is this “new” blogger. He writes about mixed cultures, mixed heritages, and mixed identities in what I believe is an effort to speak the truth about other views of our world in an effort to help break down some of the barriers that white privilege creates.

Glenn maintains several different civil-rights based blogs. Topics range from Amerindian issues [500 Nations], to immigration and multiculturalism [Community Village], to views about mixed cultural heritage [Mixed American Life], to systemic oppression, violence, and disenfranchisement [Oppression Monitor].

The blog that initially caught my eye is called Mixed American Life.  And the article that I first honed in on is called Racial Lenses.  Here are a couple of excerpts from this blog.  If you are interested in more of his work, please check it out. I’m impressed. I hope you are too.

What is a racial lens?

A racial lens is what influences how you view the world by way of your own experience, your own racial and ethnic experience. -Glenn Robinson

Xenophobic Racial Lenses

Some ways cultures describe their own color

  • Africans – Black
  • Asians – Gold
  • Chicanos – Bronze
  • Native Americans – Earth tone, Golden
  • Europeans – White, Pink, Red

Mixed Heritage Racial Lens

Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage

I HAVE THE RIGHT…
Not to justify my existence in this world.
Not to keep the races separate within me.
Not to justify my ethnic legitimacy.
Not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical or ethnic ambiguity…. [and more, this is just a start of the list of rights Glenn presents in his blog]

August 19, 2015 Gallery

Artist Shirin Barghi Captures #LASTWORDS Spoken by Black Victims of Police

Black Lives DO Matter. These last words from the mouths of babes are truly powerful.

August 8, 2015

On a stage with no vaginas, there were a lot of opinions about vaginas

Keep Abortion Legal NOW Round

Keep Abortion Legal NOW Round (http://www.now.org/issues/abortion/)

On Thursday evening, August 6, FOX News aired two sets of GOP presidential debates. From both the questioners and the candidates, there were a lot of opinions about vaginas on both stages by people mostly without vaginas. Also a lot of bullying – of women and of immigrants. Is that the only opinions they have? Sad…

Margaret and Helen

Margaret, let’s be clear. I am obviously using the term vagina in the narrowest sense of the word as defined by the Republican Party: a noun referring to women. And it was pretty clear at the debate that vaginas have no value unless a baby needs to pass through one on its way to church or its minimum wage job. Of course, if that baby is black or brown, then the intended destination changes to either prison or Mexico respectively.

I don’t pretend to think that any of the presidential candidates will ever read what I write, but if they did I hope they will remember this:

Millions of women have been going to Planned Parenthood for nearly 100 years. We all remember the exceptional care and the quality of the information we received from the staff at those clinics. We remember when Planned Parenthood staff held our hands and…

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