In a better world, my professor would have course-corrected this student. I was left alone to do it in a way that was free to my peers but costly to me.
On the flight back to Minneapolis I researched why “tribe” and “tribalism” are so problematic. I learned that the words originated with white Christian conquerors and their violence toward not only Native people, but Africans as well.
you may know of your Asian neighbors, but how truly deep is your desire to know about our personal gifts, our cultures and histories, our immigration stories, and how hard our grandmothers worked to make a life for us?
It is unbelievable that almost a year ago the community of Worthington, where I live, became a coronavirus hotspot. I remember counting down the days until it hit my family.
Punishment culture encourages the view that an individual deserves harm — that the individual person is a “bad” person. Punishment marks someone as not worthy of belonging.
The American mythology of “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps” glosses over the hurdles and inequities of work and human value in our society. Labor and service work is undervalued and underpaid.
How do we reimagine the work of reducing poverty, supporting mental health services, and dealing with trauma to minimize substance abuse and violence, in order to diminish the need for police to step in as an end to those consequences?
