My Guest Column in the Los Angeles Free Press July 2020: An open mind is said by some to be a virtue that corrects errors in judgment. Others find an open mind a signal of indecisiveness, being wishy-washy, or an inability to think for oneself.  Either way, it’s likely very few, if any, of us would want to admit to having a closed mind. In truth, it is likely we all are, at any given time, somewhere on the continuum between having an open and a closed mind and it varies by da

Law enforcement is a difficult job. Among my family members is a police officer, a deputy sheriff, and a California Highway Patrol officer. Each pledged to lay down their life to protect and serve if needed. And in the line of duty, each of them has faced traumatic accidents and situations continuing to haunt them to this day. They are personally committed to honor, respect, and accountability. With that, I’d like to start with what “Defund the Police” does not mean. Is doe

My Guest Column in The Los Angeles Free Press July, 2020 August, 1970. I was a white high schooler in my even-whiter southern California suburb. Thus far it had been a momentous year. With the launch of the Vietnam draft lottery, boys began disappearing in January, and Edwin Starr recorded “War, what is it good for?” The Kent State student shootings happened in May, and Neil Young sang ”…four dead in O-hi-o.” In June, on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, tens o

Here’s a phrase I hear from many of my white friends. “I’m not a racist.” Of course you’re not a racist – you’re not burning crosses on people’s front yards or using the n-word. I too once felt I was not a racist. I saw myself as one of the “good” white people, because I cared. But here’s what all white people have to understand: it’s our obligation to educate ourselves about what it has meant in the past, and what it means today, to be white. Many people today are making the

Women’s Strike 1970: A Unique Perspective by Carolyn L. Baker, M.Ed. Guest Writer, Los Angeles Free Press. It was fifty years ago this August when this article appeared https://losangelesfreepress.com/womens-strike-1970/ and Joyce Duvall described how about 1000 women went on strike in downtown Los Angeles for Women’s Liberation. Marchers included members of National Organization of Women (NOW), Radical Feminists, and Gay Liberation groups. A counter-demonstration by members

Through the process of finalizing Chapter 5: Womanism of An Unintentional Accomplice I had the opportunity for frank conversations with my publisher Gabrielle David, a black woman, about the divide between white women and black women. Although I had written about ways in which the feminist movement had expected and demanded women of color to be a silent, obedient ally to white women's agenda, I was unaware of the historical and psychological components of this dynamic. Our c

For a while now I’ve been recommending white people to read books written by black authors. As a companion to this, I highly recommend WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA? This first of its kind anthology, published by black and brown female led 2Leaf Press, is a collection of 82 deeply personal narratives from white American's speaking frankly and openly about race. The question WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE WHITE IN AMERICA? is deceptively simple. And in answering the questi

A question I am often asked is “What does it mean to ‘do the work’ of inclusivity?” In An Unintentional Accomplice: A Personal Perspective on White Responsibility, I explore this question and include the following Checklist with numerous real-life ways an ordinary person can do something extraordinary – take responsibility for building a community in which all people are valued and equal in the eyes of the law: · Speak up on behalf of those who have it less comfortable than m

I attended grade school and middle school in segregated southern California in the 1950s and 1960s. The history of Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, when a white mob attacked the thriving Greenwood district of Tulsa, burned it to the ground, killing an estimated 300 of its black residents, was not part of the curriculum. In fact I was not taught about any major black historical events of any kind. To include black history would have been to contradict the white narrative of this