Cracking the Codes shows every day racism in America

vignette - trip to the supermarket

vignette - trip to the supermarketNew film asks America to talk about the causes and consequences of systemic inequity. Check out this vignette from the movie Cracking the Codes in which Joy DeGruy describes A Trip to the Grocery Store, where she as a Black woman is targeted for humiliation until her white skinned sister-in-law steps in.

Sister-in-law shines a deserving spotlight on the injustice and inequity of how poorly Joy is being treated as compared with the friendly and welcoming customer service she just received. It becomes immediately clear to all observers that the shabby treatment is race related and it needs to stop. Joy points out that her half-Black, half-white SIL who appears to be a white woman, journeys through life with an understanding of the power of white privilege and is not afraid to use it to right racial injustice wherever she goes … And Joy invites white people everywhere to do the same.
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Peggy McIntosh’s extraordinary essay on what it means to possess White Privilege

I can go shopping without being harassed

I hope you enjoy this extraordinary essay by gifted writer, thinker and egalitarian, Peggy McIntosh as much as I do. For your downloading pleasure, here’s a condensed list of 50 ways white privilege is experienced in America (thanks for the link Helen Tinsley!).

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
by Peggy McIntosh

I can go shopping without being harassedThrough work to bring materials from women’s studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men’s unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women’s status, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can’t or won’t support the idea of lessening men’s. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women’s disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended. read more