Dear Audre, How do you deal with white people who act like they “get it,” but clearly do not? Best, It’s Hard Out Here _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hey It’s Hard Out Here, First things first, you have the right to be annoyed. So often, people of color who are friends with white folks don’t call them out…
The Veil: Evaluating Race Relations at Yale
“Ignorance is a cure for nothing” – W.E.B. Dubois For the last stop on our route, we tour guides like to end with a brief anecdote about why we chose Yale. For me, the exact words of the speech change every time, but the larger theme is the same: community. That is why I chose…
Bring Our Power Back
Between the grassroots support that emerged from #BlackLivesMatter, the student-led organizing of cultural center reform campaigns, the Fossil Free movement, financial aid reform protests, and now the project to Unite Yale, there has been an immense growth of activism on campus. Although there have always been a handful of Yalies who were willing to throw…
Say My Name
My first name is Karléh – the Ghanian word for “lovely”. My middle name is Ashanta, which is an extension of the Swahili word for life, “Asha”. In some Southeast Native American tribes, Ashanta means Princess. And for the Ashanti tribe in Ghana, having the name Ashanta denotes royal blood. So, my name can be…
From Sand Creek to Ferguson
“Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shore, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy.” –…