In the Blog
Mid-Week Round Up: June 18
Illustration: Erin McPhee
Last night (June 17) nine people were killed in a mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The church is the oldest Black congregation in the American south. As of posting this round-up the shooter is still at large. Police have released pictures of the suspect who is a young white male (EDITOR’S UPDATE: the suspect, Dylann Roof, has been arrested). As Mark Follman notes in Mother Jones, “Most mass shooters in the United States have been white males, as our investigation of three decades worth of data shows. In most cases, the killers obtained their guns legally.” Writing on the mass shooting for Al Jazeera, Khaled A Beydoun writes:
“The attack on Emanuel AME cannot be divorced from the broader targeting of black bodies in the US. It follows last week’s horrific events in McKinney, Texas, where vivid images of policemen manhandling and sitting atop black youth intensified frustration among African Americans.
Moreover, it takes place amid a broader context of both public and private violence against black American communities, which spawned the Black Lives Matter movement.”
The story of Rachel Dolezal, the white civil rights activist who was outed recently for misrepresenting herself as a Black woman, has taken over much of social and mainstream media. Here are some critical readings on Dolezal’s actions:
Mimicry Is Not Solidarity: Rachel Dolezal and the Creation of Antiracist White Identity
Rachel Dolezal’s Definition of ‘Transracial’ Isn’t Just Wrong, It’s Destructive
Black Like Me… NOT! Rachel Dolezal and the Myth of (Her) Blackness
There is no comparison between transgender people and Rachel Dolezal
Changes to nationality and immigration laws in the Dominican Republic have put hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants and Dominicans of Haitian descent at risk for deportation. More here:
Haitians In Dominican Republic Fear Deportation As Deadline Looms
The Dominican Republic’s “Ethnic Purging”: Edwidge Danticat on Mass Deportation of Haitian Families
Dominican Republic Preparing Strip Citizenship From Quarter Of A Million People (Video link)
Kamala Khan, the newest Ms. Marvel and Marvel comic’s first Muslim comic book character, will be making her TV debut in 2016.
Comedian and YouTube personality Franchesca Ramsey (also known as Chescaleigh who created the skit “Shit White Girls Say…to Black Girls”) has launched a new webseries for MTV News discussing race and pop culture. Check out her latest installment:
In Shameless news, we just our Environmental Justice issue is now on newsstands, are looking for people to join our Youth Advisory Board, and will be presenting at the Allied Media Conference) this weekend.