How to Be an Antiracist (29 page)

“Did Martin Luther King successfully fight”
:
See “D.C. Residents Urged to Care, Join War on Guns,”
The Washington Post,
January 14, 1995, available at
www.washingtonpost.com/​archive/​local/​1995/​01/​14/​dc-residents-urged-to-care-join-war-on-guns/​0b36f1f3-27ac-4685-8fb6-3eda372e93ac/
.

“You are costing everybody’s freedom,” Jesse Jackson told
:
James Forman Jr.,
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
(New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2017), 195.

“It isn’t racist for Whites to say”
:
“Transcript of President Clinton’s Speech on Race Relations,” CNN, October 17, 1995, available at
www.cnn.com/​US/​9510/​megamarch/​10-16/​clinton/​update/​transcript.html
.

Black people needed to stop playing “race cards”
:
Peter Collier and David Horowitz, eds.,
The Race Card: White Guilt, Black Resentment, and the Assault on Truth and Justice
(Rocklin, CA: Prima, 1997).

The same behavioral racism drove many of the Trump voters
:
See “Poll: Trump Supporters More Likely to View Black People as ‘Violent’ and ‘Lazy,’ ”
Colorlines,
July 1, 2016, available at
www.colorlines.com/​articles/​poll-trump-supporters-more-likely-view-black-people-violent-and-lazy
; and “Research Finds That Racism, Sexism, and Status Fears Drove Trump Voters,”
Pacific Standard,
April 24, 2018, available at
psmag.com/​news/​research-finds-that-racism-sexism-and-status-fears-drove-trump-voters
.

“America’s Black community…has turned America’s major cities”
:
See “Homeland Security Official Resigns After Comments Linking Blacks to ‘Laziness’ and ‘Promiscuity’ Come to Light,”
The Washington Post,
November 17, 2017, available at
www.washingtonpost.com/​news/​powerpost/​wp/​2017/​11/​16/​republican-appointee-resigns-from-the-dhs-after-past-comments-about-blacks-muslims-come-to-light/
.

“obvious for decades that the real culprit is black behavior”
:
Jason L. Riley,
Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed
(New York: Encounter Books, 2016), 4.

“had improved greatly in every respect”
:
See B. Ricardo Brown,
Until Darwin, Science, Human Variety and the Origins of Race
(New York: Routledge, 2015), 72.

Freed Blacks “cut off from the spirit of White society”
:
Philip A. Bruce,
The Plantation Negro as a Freeman: Observations on His Character, Condition, and Prospects in Virginia
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889), 53, 129, 242.

“All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes”
:
See Benjamin Rush,
An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, Upon Slave-Keeping
(Boston: John Boyles, 1773).

Garrison stated that slavery degraded Black people
:
William Lloyd Garrison, “Preface,” in Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(Boston: Anti-Slavery Office, 1849), vii.

“the first and greatest step toward the settlement of the present friction between the races”
:
W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Conversation of Races,” in
W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader,
ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 20–27.

Jim Crow historian’s framing of slavery as a civilizing force
:
See Bruce,
The Plantation Negro as a Freeman
.

Black “infighting,” materialism, poor parenting, colorism, defeatism, rage
:
See Joy DeGruy,
Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing
(Portland: Joy DeGruy Publications, 2005).

PTSD rates ranged from 13.5 to 30 percent
:
Miriam Reisman, “PTSD Treatment for Veterans: What’s Working, What’s New, and What’s Next,”
Pharmacy and Therapeutics
41:10 (2016), 632–64.

“There is not one personality trait of the Negro”
:
Abram Kardiner and Lionel Ovesey,
The Mark of Oppression: A Psychosocial Study of the American Negro
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1951), 81.

The so-called Nation’s Report Card told Americans the same story
:
For this data in the Nation’s Report Card, see
www.nationsreportcard.gov/
.

the lowest mean SAT scores of any racial group
:
“SAT Scores Drop,”
Inside Higher Ed,
September 3, 2015, available at
www.insidehighered.com/​news/​2015/​09/​03/​sat-scores-drop-and-racial-gaps-remain-large
.

the U.S. test-prep and private tutoring industry
:
See “New SAT Paying Off for Test-Prep Industry,”
Boston Globe,
March 5, 2016, available at
www.bostonglobe.com/​business/​2016/​03/​04/​new-sat-paying-off-for-test-prep-industry/​blQeQKoSz1yAksN9N9463K/​story.html
.

the so-called “attribution effect”
:
“Why We Don’t Give Each Other a Break,”
Psychology Today,
June 20, 2014, available at
www.psychologytoday.com/​us/​blog/​real-men-dont-write-blogs/​201406/​why-we-dont-give-each-other-break
.

“average intellectual standard of the negro race is some two grades below our own”
:
Sir Francis Galton,
Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences
(New York: D. Appleton, 1870), 338.

France’s Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon succeeded…1905
:
See Margaret B. White and Alfred E. Hall, “An Overview of Intelligence Testing,”
Educational Horizons
58:4 (Summer 1980), 210–16.

“enormously significant racial differences in general intelligence”
:
Lewis Madison Terman,
The Measurement of Intelligence
(New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 92.

Brigham presented the soldiers’ racial scoring gap
:
See Carl C. Brigham,
A Study of American Intelligence
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923).

Physicist William Shockley and psychologist Arthur Jensen carried these eugenic ideas
:
See Stephen Jay Gould,
The Mismeasure of Man
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).

genetic explanations…had largely been discredited
:
See Carl N. Degler,
In Search of Human Nature: The Decline and Revival of Darwinism in American Social Thought
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

“both genes and the environment have something to do with racial differences”
:
Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray,
The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010), 311.

districts with a higher proportion of White students receive significantly more funding
:
“Studies Show Racial Bias in Pennsylvania School Funding,”
The Times Herald,
April 15, 2017.

The chronic underfunding of Black schools in Mississippi
:
“Lawsuit Alleges Mississippi Deprives Black Children of Equal Educational Opportunities,”
ABA Journal,
May 23, 2017, available at
www.abajournal.com/​news/​article/​lawsuit_alleges_mississippi_deprives_black_children_of_equal_educational_op
.

“We must no longer be ashamed of being black
”
:
Martin Luther King Jr., “ ‘Where Do We Go from Here?,’ Address Delivered at the Eleventh Annual SCLC Convention,” April 16, 1967, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, available at
kinginstitute.stanford.edu/​king-papers/​documents/​where-do-we-go-here-address-delivered-eleventh-annual-sclc-convention
.

Florida A&M had outpaced Harvard
:
See “FAMU Ties Harvard in Recruitment of National Achievement Scholars,”
Diverse: Issues in Higher Education,
February 1, 2001, available at
diverseeducation.com/​article/​1139/
.

“the best college marching band in the country”
:
For a history, see Curtis Inabinett Jr.,
The Legendary Florida A&M University Marching Band: The History of “The Hundred”
(New York: Page Publishing, 2016).

“white beauty repackaged with dark hair”
:
Margaret L. Hunter,
Race, Gender, and the Politics of Skin Tone
(New York: Routledge, 2013), 57.

“colorism,” a term coined by novelist Alice Walker
:
See Alice Walker,
In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose
(San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983).

relegate them to minority status
:
See “The US Will Become ‘Minority White’ in 2045, Census Projects,” Brookings, March 14, 2018, available at
www.brookings.edu/​blog/​the-avenue/​2018/​03/​14/​the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/
.

the biracial key to racial harmony
:
See, for example, “What Biracial People Know,”
The New York Times,
March 4, 2017, available at
www.nytimes.com/​2017/​03/​04/​opinion/​sunday/​what-biracial-people-know.html
.

“skin color paradox”
:
Jennifer L. Hochschild and Vesla Weaver, “The Skin Color Paradox and the American Racial Order,”
Social Forces
86:2 (December 2007), 643–70.

White children attribute positivity to lighter skin
:
“Study: White and Black Children Biased Toward Lighter Skin,” CNN, May 14, 2010, available at
www.cnn.com/​2010/​US/​05/​13/​doll.study/
.

White people usually favor lighter-skinned politicians
:
Vesla M. Weaver, “The Electoral Consequences of Skin Color: The ‘Hidden’ Side of Race in Politics,”
Political Behavior
34:1 (March 2012), 159–92.

disproportionately at risk of hypertension
:
Elizabeth A. Adams, Beth E. Kurtz-Costes, and Adam J. Hoffman, “Skin Tone Bias Among African Americans: Antecedents and Consequences Across the Life Span,”
Developmental Review
40 (2016), 109.

significantly lower GPAs than Light students
:
Maxine S. Thompson and Steve McDonald, “Race, Skin Tone, and Educational Achievement,”
Sociological Perspectives
59:1 (2016), 91–111.

racist Americans have higher expectations for Light students
:
Ebony O. McGree, “Colorism as a Salient Space for Understanding in Teacher Preparation,”
Theory into Practice
55:1 (2016), 69–79.

remember educated Black men as Light-skinned
:
Avi Ben-Zeev, Tara C. Dennehy, Robin I. Goodrich, Branden S. Kolarik, and Mark W. Geisler, “When an ‘Educated’ Black Man Becomes Lighter in the Mind’s Eye: Evidence for a Skin Tone Memory Bias,”
SAGE Open
4:1 (January 2014), 1–9.

employers prefer Light Black men
:
Matthew S. Harrison, and Kecia M. Thomas, “The Hidden Prejudice in Selection: A Research Investigation on Skin Color Bias,”
Journal of Applied Social Psychology
39:1 (2009), 134–68.

Dark Filipino men have lower incomes than their lighter peers
:
Lisa Kiang and David T. Takeuchi, “Phenotypic Bias and Ethnic Identity in Filipino Americans,”
Social Science Quarterly
90:2 (2009), 428–45.

Dark immigrants to the United States…tend to have less wealth and income
:
Angela R. Dixon and Edward E. Telles, “Skin Color and Colorism: Global Research, Concepts, and Measurement,”
Annual Review of Sociology
43 (2017), 405–24.

Light Latinx people receive higher wages
:
Maria Cristina Morales, “Ethnic-Controlled Economy or Segregation? Exploring Inequality in Latina/o Co-Ethnic Jobsites,”
Sociological Forum
24:3 (September 2009), 589–610.

Dark Latinx people are more likely to be employed at ethnically homogeneous jobsites
:
Maria Cristina Morales, “The Ethnic Niche as an Economic Pathway for the Dark Skinned: Labor Market Incorporation of Latina/o Workers,”
Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences
30:3 (August 2008), 280–98.

Dark sons and Light daughters receive higher-quality
:
Antoinette M. Landor et al., “Exploring the Impact of Skin Tone on Family Dynamics and Race-Related Outcomes,”
Journal of Family Psychology
27:5 (2013), 817–26.

Skin color influences perceptions of attractiveness
:
Mark E. Hill, “Skin Color and the Perception of Attractiveness Among African Americans: Does Gender Make a Difference?,”
Social Psychology Quarterly
65:1 (March 2002), 77–91.

As skin tone lightens, levels of self-esteem among Black women rise
:
Adams, Kurtz-Costes, and Hoffman, “Skin Tone Bias Among African Americans,” 107.

Dark African Americans receive the harshest prison sentences
:
Jill Viglione, Lance Hannon, and Robert DeFina, “The Impact of Light Skin on Prison Time for Black Female Offenders,”
The Social Science Journal
48: (2011), 250–58.

White male offenders with African facial features receive harsher sentences
:
Ryan D. King and Brian D. Johnson, “A Punishing Look: Skin Tone and Afrocentric Features in the Halls of Justice,”
American Journal of Sociology
122:1 (July 2016), 90–124.

Dark female students are nearly twice as likely to be suspended
:
Lance Hannon, Robert DeFina, and Sarah Bruch, “The Relationship Between Skin Tone and School Suspension for African Americans,”
Race and Social Problems
5:4 (December 2013), 281–95.

Even Dark gay men heard it
:
Donovan Thompson, “ ‘I Don’t Normally Date Dark-Skin Men’: Colorism in the Black Gay Community,”
Huffington Post,
April 9, 2014, available at
www.huffingtonpost.com/​entry/​i-dont-normally-date-dark_b_5113166.html
.

“You’re never Black enough”
:
“Colorism: Light-Skinned African-American Women Explain the Discrimination They Face,”
Huffington Post,
January 13, 2014, available at
www.huffingtonpost.com/​entry/​colorism-discrimination-iyanla-vanzant_n_4588825.html
.

their struggle to integrate with Dark people
:
“Light-Skinned Black Women on the Pain of Not Feeling ‘Black Enough,’ ”
Huffington Post,
January 22, 2015, available at
www.huffingtonpost.com/​entry/​light-girls-not-black-enough_n_6519488.html
.

“that the Negro’s…do entertain as high thoughts”
:
Morgan Godwyn,
The Negro’s and Indian’s Advocate
(London, 1680), 21.

African people must accept the “correct conception” of beauty
:
Johann Joachim Winckelmann,
History of the Art of Antiquity,
trans. Harry Francis Mallgrave (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2006), 192–95.

slaveholders more often worked Light people in the house
:
William L. Andrews,
Slavery and Class in the American South: A Generation of Slave Narrative Testimony, 1840–1865
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 102.

“Ferocity and stupidity are the characteristics of those tribes”
:
John Ramsay McCulloch,
A Dictionary, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical of the Various Countries, Places, and Principal Natural Objects in the World,
Volume 1 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851), 33.

Smith’s racist light
:
See Samuel Stanhope Smith,
An Essay on the Causes of the Variety of Complexion and Figure in the Human Species
(New Brunswick, NJ: J. Simpson and Co, 1810).

“a degenerate, unnatural offspring, doomed by nature to work out its own destruction”
:
J. C. Nott, “The Mulatto a Hybrid—Probable Extermination of the Two Races if the Whites and Blacks Are Allowed to Intermarry,”
American Journal of Medical Sciences
66 (July 1843), 255.

private racist ideas, which typically described Light women as smarter
:
See Walter Johnson,
Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

Slaveholders paid much more for enslaved Light females
:
Ibid.

White men cast these “yaller gals” and “Jezebels”
:
See Melissa Harris-Perry,
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011).

“more likely to enlist themselves under the banners of the whites”
:
A Refutation of the Calumnies Circulated Against the Southern and Western States Respecting the Institution and Existence of Slavery Among Them
(Charleston, SC: A. E. Miller, 1822), 84.

Maybe Holland had the Brown Fellowship Society in mind
:
Thomas C. Holt,
Black over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina During Reconstruction
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 65–67.

White and Light only barbershops
:
See Hayes Johnson,
Dusk at the Mountain
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1963); and Chris Myers Asch and George Derek Musgrove,
Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017).

After slavery, Light people were wealthier
:
See Johnson,
Soul by Soul
.

dozens of cities had “Blue Vein” societies
:
Willard B. Gatewood,
Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920
(Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2000), 163.

“not white enough to show blue veins”
:
Charles W. Chesnutt, “The Wife of His Youth,”
The Atlantic Monthly,
July 1898, 55.

Light people reproduced the paper-bag test, pencil test, door test, and comb test
:
Kathy Russell, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall,
The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans
(New York: Anchor Books, 1992), 27.

Carroll considered the interracial intercourse
:
See Charles Carroll,
“The Negro a Beast”; Or, “In the Image of God”
(St. Louis: American Book and Bible House, 1900).

framing Dark people as committing “more horrible crimes”
:
George T. Winston, “The Relation of the Whites to the Negroes,”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
18 (July 1901), 108–9.

biracial people were responsible for all Black achievements
:
Edward B. Reuter,
The Mulatto in the United States
(Boston: R. G. Badger, 1918).

Marcus Garvey and his fast-growing Universal Negro Improvement Association
:
See Tony Martin,
Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association
(Dover, MA: Greenwood Press, 1976).

“American Negroes recognize no color line in or out of the race”
:
W.E.B. Du Bois, “Marcus Garvey,”
The Crisis,
January 1921.

“If you’re white, you’re right”
:
Daryl Cumber Dance, ed.,
From My People: 400 Years of African American Folklore
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 484.

his own “Talented Tenth” essay in 1903
:
See W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Talented Tenth,” in
The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative American Negroes of Today
(New York: James Pott & Company, 1903), 31–76.

the Dark masses needed “proper grooming”
:
See Charlotte Hawkins Brown, “Clipping,” Charlotte Hawkins Brown Papers, Reel 2, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA; and Constance Hill Mareena,
Lengthening Shadow of a Woman: A Biography of Charlotte Hawkins Brown
(Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1977).

John McWhorter’s avowal of a post-racial America
:
John McWhorter, “Racism in American Is Over,”
Forbes,
December 30, 2008, available at
www.forbes.com/​2008/​12/​30/​end-of-racism-oped-cx_jm_1230mcwhorter.html#50939eb949f8
.

shied away from defending the dark and poor Scottsboro Boys
:
“Why the Communist Party Defended the Scottsboro Boys,”
History Stories,
May 1, 2018, available at
www.history.com/​news/​scottsboro-boys-naacp-communist-party
.

“unmixed” Negroes were “inferior, infinitely inferior now”
:
David Levering Lewis,
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919–1963
(New York: Macmillan, 2000), 341.

“Walter White is white”
:
W.E.B. Du Bois, “Segregation in the North,”
The Crisis,
April 1934.

“I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America”
:
Malcolm X recalled in Malcolm X and Alex Haley,
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
(New York: Random House, 2015), 64.