​ Growing up white, and in segregated communities, I didn’t think I even had a race. There was nothing to be questioned, learned about, or studied. I was oblivious, bathed in the safety and comfort I thought everyone was enjoying. I never had to wonder whether or not I “belonged” in the U.S. This experience reifies the reality of whiteness as the dominant culture. To know who I am as a racial being today I firsts had understand my racial past. This is the concept of Sankofa,

The events of three momentous Wednesdays in January 2021 shook us to our core - the insurrection, the impeachment, and the inauguration. And now, in the painful aftermath, comes the important task of connection-making. What do these three events all have in common? The shared quality accompanying each of these three events is a deep political polarization. This divide has been developing ever since the 60s when the two parties split over segregation. The nearly 50/50 national

As we seek to assign blame for the insurrection at our U.S. Capital yesterday, let us stop and really bear witness to the outcome of our mollycoddling White supremacy. Implicit racial bias harms and debilitates the soul of the White community and flies against our deepest moral and civic traditions. Let us reckon that White supremacy is the White community’s to dismantle, for the sake of its own liberation. The responsibility for repairing the racial divide must shift out of

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