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Halloween 2021: Can We Not With Cultural Appropriation?
Halloween is my favorite holiday. Honestly, spooky season in general is the best time of the year. You’ve got apple cider donuts, trips to the pumpkin patch, all the candy you can eat, and the best Trader Joes snacks to look forward to! But the thing that continues to haunt me, yes even in 2021, is we still have to deal with people wearing problematic costumes.
Confessions of a DEI Professional
Working in diversity, equity and inclusion is complicated. There are the day-to-day difficulties: dealing with the delusions of white supremacy/supremacists, subconsciously looping a list of every injustice in the world, and constantly being called upon to “talk to” that family member, but we know that comes with the territory.
Lessons Learned at CRT Camp.
For a week in August, the African American Policy Forum (a think tank headed up by one of the most influential antiracist educators and critical race theorists in the country, Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw) hosted CRT Summer School to help folx across sectors understand the politically-motivated, unwarranted attacks against truth-telling in K-12 schools and institutions of higher education.
Why Beloved Community: Patrizia Santos
In 10th grade, during Premilitary Instruction (a mandatory class in Venezuela), we had to memorize our constitution, focusing on our rights and duties as people living in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. It read like a fairytale.
What We Learned: New Orleans, LA Equity in School Cohort 20-21
In July of 2020, amidst dual pandemics in this country: both COVID 19 and systemic racism, Beloved Community launched our New Orleans Equity in Schools Cohort. This cohort marked our first all-virtual series in which we led eight synchronous sessions on Zoom.
Interrogating Inaccuracies: Hate Crime Data and APIDA Communities.
Anti-Asian violence is rarely categorized as a hate crime by law enforcement. In fact, it is worth noting that the very process of determining what constitutes a hate crime is deeply flawed, revealing how various legal institutions play crucial roles in reinforcing identity hierarchies and dismissing the intersectionality that shapes people’s lives.
Multiple Truths
People often don’t make space for the existence of others’ experiences due to a real fear of a false assumption: that doing so will erase the existence of their own experiences.
APIDA Complexities: Learning, Unlearning, Relearning
Domestic (to the United States) and global APIDA communities are complex and diasporic. In order to dismantle anti-Asian violence, we must start by disaggregating and differentiating Asian identities, experiences, and cultures that typically get lumped together and create dangerous monoliths. The mythology of the model minority is one of those monoliths. The model minority myth asserts that the “Asian community” is high achieving and successful, positioning them as an exemplar for other BIPOC to emulate.
Global History of White Supremacy and Anti-Blackness.
Dr. Isabel Wilkerson calls the U.S. a caste system because of the racial hierarchy people in power invented. In this hierarchy, Black people and people close to Blackness are positioned at the bottom, white people and those in proximity to whiteness at the top, and all other racial groups are categorized according to this dichotomy.
Xenophobia and Racism Are Nothing New to the United States: a Critical Lens on Anti-Asian Hate.
Beloved Community stands in solidarity with our Asian, Pacific Islander & Desi American (APIDA) community. We are united against racism and hate crimes that kill communities of color. Full stop. Period. Xenophobia and racism are American pastimes.