racial discrimination
Woman of Light, by Kali Fajardo-Anstine / One World
PRIMARILY SET IN 1930s Denver, Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s debut novel, Woman of Light, is a deeply immersive story about the survival and legacy of an Indigenous Chicano family. When a violent mob attacks him for having a relationship with a white woman, Diego Lopez flees the city, leaving his younger sister, Luz Lopez, with their aunt Maria Josie. But working as a laundress isn’t enough to keep a roof over their heads, so Luz gets a job as a typist for a local Greek lawyer. When a cop kills a Mexican factory worker, Luz’s boss David takes on the case, and Luz is exposed to the inner workings of an unjust system.
Epic in scope, the novel covers five generations. While we focus mainly on Luz and Diego’s timeline in the 1930s, we also get brief glimpses of the people who came before them. There is Desiderya Lopez, the Sleepy Prophet of Pardona Pueblo, who finds an abandoned newborn and raises him as her own. This child is Pidre Lopez, who later departs Pardona after Desiderya’s death. In the town of Animas, Pidre falls in love with the widow and sharpshooter Simodecea Salazar-Smith when he recruits her for his performing theater. Together, they run the vibrant business and raise their daughters Sara and Maria Josie until tragedy strikes with the arrival of white prospectors.
Image via J. Stephen Conn / Flickr
“The reason for this action involved the church’s un-Christian attitudes and acts toward another associational church. These attitudes and acts were racially-motivated,” the association said in an April 4 statement. “Thus they do not reflect the values and mission of the Mallary Baptist Association.”
In the midst of so much death, how can we Christians celebrate Easter?
These questions can be paired with questions regarding our own sense of worship on that day. How much have we Christians replaced justice with worship, not taking one into serious relation with the other? Are we accustomed to worship in the total absence of justice?
Screenshot via Tampa Bay Times
Black motorists in Florida are twice more likely to be shot by police after being pulled over for a traffic violation than white motorists in Florida, reports the Tampa Bay Times in an online interactive, “If You’re Black.”
This statistic is part of a new investigative study by the paper of every police shooting that occurred in Florida from 2009-2014. The newspaper gathered data from autopsies, news articles, police reports, and subsequent lawsuits.
Wilson and Jones’ data reflects that, in 2015 — just as in 1975 — poor black Americans worked more hours than poor white Americans. It also reflects that the labor of black women who work low-wage jobs has increased larger than the labor of any other demographic studied by Wilson and Jones, even demographics that are combinations of racial, gender, and income. Black woman with low-wage jobs have increased their hours of labor since 1979 by 30 percent.
Image via Burlingham / Shutterstock.com
A judge upheld North Carolina’s controversial election laws on April 25, reports The New York Times.
The ruling comes months before a presidential election in a state that narrowly went to Barack Obama in 2008 and to Mitt Romney in 2012.
Photo: File from Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice
Twenty-seven evangelical Christian leaders across Texas and the United States are calling on Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson to allow a new, fair sentencing hearing for Duane Buck. Mr. Buck is an African-American man who was condemned to death after his sentencing jury was told that he was likely to be a future danger because of his race. These evangelical Christian leaders oppose the setting of any execution date for Mr. Buck.
“We write to respectfully request that you support a new, fair sentencing hearing for death row prisoner Duane Buck,” the letter states. “Although opinions on the death penalty vary within each of our churches, we are strongly united in our view that no death sentence should be a product of racial discrimination, as it was in Mr. Buck’s case.”
Demonstrator outside the Supreme Court on Monday, Brandon Hook / Sojourners
Today is a dark day in our nation’s history. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional, rendering the 48-year-old legislation impotent to protect citizens from voter suppression. Section 4 lists the states that must obtain “preclearance” from the Department of Justice before instituting changes to their voter laws. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
Only 48 years ago, on March 7, 1965, men, women, and children absorbed blasts of water, bone-crushing blows from police batons, and profound humiliation as Selma, Ala., police dragged limp black bodies over concrete on the far side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. They had assembled on that day, which came to be known as “Bloody Sunday,” to march from Selma to Montgomery in protest of voter suppression and intimidation that had plagued the entire South. Ten days later, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent the Voting Rights Act to Congress. The bill passed in the Senate on May 26 by a vote of 77 – 19 and passed in the House on July 9 of that year. President Johnson signed the Act into law with Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and others present on August 6.
Flash forward to Fall 2012. I launched a blog series called “Watch the Vote” because, as of August 2012, 30 states had introduced legislation or enacted laws to hinder voters’ access to voting over the previous year. The Fair Elections Legal Network crafted this map to chart the spread of legal voter suppression initiatives across the nation. Notice, Alabama is one of the states that has recently passed voter restriction law that has not been precleared by the Department of Justice. Its new law, requiring photo ID and proof of citizenship, was set to take effect in 2014 before the Supreme Court ruled last week that Arizona’s voter ID law, which Alabama used as a model for its own, is unconstitutional.
A woman wearing a niqab veil listens during a seminar. Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images
Jean Younis won’t be wearing an Easter bonnet at church this Sunday. Instead, the office manager at Bonita Baptist Church in San Diego will don an Islamic headscarf to support the family and friends of Shaima Alawadi, the Iraqi immigrant and mother of five who died March 24, three days after being beaten in her home in El Cajon, Calif.
“I do expect a reaction, but that’s the point. It needs to be discussed,” said Younis, 59, who predicted that most church members would be supportive or respectfully inquisitive.
She is one of many non-Muslim women to post photos of themselves wearing a headscarf on “One Million Hijabs for Shaima Alawadi,” a recently created Facebook Page that had nearly 10,000 likes on Monday (April 2) and hundreds of photos. Others posting on the page have identified themselves as Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, Jews, Pagans, and atheists.
Parents of shooting victim Trayvon Martin speak out. Red Huber/Orlando Sentinel/MCT via Getty Images
It’s been almost a month since the slaying of Trayvon Martin. This particular African-American child was intentionally shot through the chest while walking back from the store in a Florida suburb. He was armed with a pack of skittles and some iced tea.
For the past few weeks, each time I open my Facebook account or scroll through Twitter I see endless posts about the Trayvon Martin case. And I’ve seen Trayvon’s faceover and over again. He was 17 but he looks like a 15-year-old cousin of mine.
I have not written anything about this tragedy because to be honest, I have been unable to find my words around or through this. I could write about anger, injustice, racism, the loss of another black male child, crazy American gun laws or even the shock or actually lack thereof, of how the police initially handled this murder. But mostly what I want to write about is the deep, deep sadness and sorrow I cannot seem to shake.
On March 7, 1965, 600 civil rights marchers attempted to walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in support of equal voting rights for blacks and whites.