June 11 - 18, 2021

Today's post covers the week of June 11-18, 2021.

 

Slavery By Another Name

This PBS documentary is adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas A. Blackmon - Slavery By Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II. In the 80 years between the two wars, involuntary servitude persisted for Black Southerners. After Reconstruction fell apart in the 1870s, new laws criminalized everyday aspects of Black life. Prisons then leased Black convicts to mines, farms, and factories to provide inexpensive labor that boosted the Southern economy. The use of debt to extract labor, also known as peonage, along with state-sponsored prison labor (chain gangs performing labor on behalf of the state) replaced convict leasing to private industry until the 1940s. Just after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued Circular No. 3591, which directed federal prosecutors to build cases around involuntary servitude or slavery. The government prosecuted a Texas man in 1942 for harboring slaves as a result.

How to Help Students of Color Find Their Power

Brandy Arnold, Director of School Success + Training for Project Wayfinder, writes this article for the Great Good Magazine about steps teachers, coaches and staff can take to support BIPOC students. Educators can help students build agency and purpose by creating opportunities for them to explore and discuss the world, their place within it, and their desires to meaningfully shape their surroundings. Figuring these things out can help mitigate students' feelings of powerlessness. Arnold goes on to recommend four concrete ideas for educators interested in this work.

 

Pittsburgh Poised For History-Making Election of Its First Black Mayor This Fall 

Nick Keppler writes this article for the Washington Post on Ed Gainey, a 51-year-old state representative who is widely expected to become Pittsburgh's first Black mayor this fall. Gainey defeated the incumbent Bill Peduto in May's Democratic primary. While 23% of Pittsburgh's residents are Black and similar cities throughout the Midwest and Northeast have already elected Black mayors, this will be a first for Pittsburgh. Gainey ran his primary campaign with ideas on how to make one of America's most livable cities more livable for its Black residents and others affected by gentrification.

 

Civil Squared: How to Have Better Conversations About Race 

On this episode of the Civil Squared podcast, Jennifer K. Thompson talks with York College Associate Professor Erec Smith about some of the challenges with our current discourse on race. Smith believes that most people enter discussions on race focused on protecting themselves rather than seeing people for who they really are. Too often, Smith says, people flatten someone else's identity rather than really listening for understanding. Context and nuance are lost by taking these shortcuts. Smith believes we start conversations with our positions on everything staked out as opposed to listening with open hearts, minds, and wills.

 

The Rise of Black Homeschooling 

Casey Parks of the New Yorker writes about the history of homeschooling in the US and the recent increase of the practice during the pandemic. Over the past 18 months, the nationwide proportion of homeschoolers among Black families rose from 3% pre-pandemic to 16% by late 2020. Many of those who chose to homeschool said they’d had no choice, with 80% citing pervasive racism and inequities as a primary reason to pull their children out of traditional schools. Non-profits such as the Charles Koch Institute and the Walton Family Foundation, which traditionally support school choice initiatives such as charter schools and vouchers, have provided grant money to fund homeschooling collectives like Engaged Detroit. For many Black families, the ability to improvise a curriculum is a major reason to try homeschooling.

 

An Immigrant Family Moves Through Generational Trauma 

The story of Collete Mombo is told through NPR's Where We Come From, a series dedicated to the immigrant experience in the US. Mombo was born into an all-Black community in Queens before moving to a New Jersey suburb that was mostly white. Her mother, an English immigrant with Somali heritage, and her father, a Jamaican-American, were hoping to give their children better opportunities by moving out of the city. Instead, neighbors regularly taunted and used the N-word toward the family. Mombo was even violently attacked by a neighborhood teenager, leaving her unconscious. As an adult living in Connecticut, she has focused on peaceful advocacy by starting Justice Southbury, which brings her community together through rallies aimed at social justice.

 

The Clubby World of Venture Capital Finds a New Bet: Black Entrepreneurs

Te-Ping Chen reports on the growth of Black investors and founders for the Wall Street Journal. Last year, there were a record 306 venture-capital investments in Black-founded U.S. companies, nearly twice the number from five years earlier. Black-led venture firms such as Slauson & Co. and Harlem Capital have raised hundreds of millions in commitments to invest in companies with founders who are female or people of color. Companies with at least one non-white founder tend to outperform their peers, returning 30% more cash to investors when they go public or are acquired. While venture capitalists have tended to look for entrepreneurs who fit their image of a promising founder - e.g. Mark Zuckerberg - more Black models of success should help investors see potential where they might not have before.

 

Juneteenth 

Yesterday, Juneteenth became a federal holiday. Since I started this blog on Juneteenth, 2020, I thought I'd finish my year-long journey with this brief history of the holiday from the Texas State Historical Association. Juneteenth has been celebrated in Texas since the 1870s and was formally recognized as a state holiday here in 1979. Several cities set aside land to hold formal celebrations and recognition, often calling these sites Emancipation Park. This year, the Rice football team shared breakfast at Houston's Emancipation Park in honor of Juneteenth.