100 Years In 100 Days (A White Suburban Mom's Attempt To Understand Racism In America)

  Day 86 2006: FBI Issues Report Detailing How White Supremacists Infiltrate Law Enforcement As Way To Advance Their Racist Ideology Though they had been reporting on this for decades to local police agencies to warn them this was happening, in 2006 they sent out a full report of White Supremacists joining the police ranks in order to protect their members from police, and also further their white superiority over people of color. You can read the full report, but here is what it looks like according to TheGrio (a news site geared to African Americans, hence why you have likely never heard of it before). This is their article: Because of intensifying civil strife over the recent killings of unarmed black men and boys, many Americans are wondering, “What’s wrong with our police?” Remarkably, one of the most compelling but unexplored explanations may rest with a FBI warning of October 2006, which reported that “White supremacist infiltration of law enforcement” represented a signific...

  Day 91 2011: Black Students Receive Far Harsher Punishments Than Their White Classmates From the New York Times: The Little Rock Nine were escorted by soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division at the order of President Eisenhower, a moment that is rightly celebrated as a triumph in civil rights history. But a few months after taking her historic steps, Minnijean was suspended for dropping a cafeteria tray after white students obstructed her path. She was later expelled for calling other tormentors “white trash,” after they threw a purse full of combination locks at her. Although these were not major transgressions, and she was not the instigator, Minnijean was the one harshly disciplined, not the white students. Back then, inequitably harsh discipline was a tool used by resistant white schools to make sure that racial integration would not mean equal education for black students. The racial discipline gap is now a firmly established reality in Arkansas and around the country. Tod...

  Day 96 2016: University of Texas White Student Sues School Because She Didn’t Get In, and of Course Blames Black People Abigail Fisher had a dream: To attend the University of Texas. Sadly, she didn’t get in. Rather than recognizing that her grades really weren’t very good, she decided to blame Affirmative Action- suing the university by saying that the university admitted students of color who were less qualified than her and she was therefore being discriminated against. The University of Texas admits 19,482 freshmen every year out of about 50,575 applicants. Of those numbers, there were 47 students admitted who had lesser credentials than Fisher (so, she obviously wasn’t super qualified to begin with if she was number 48 from the bottom. Her grades were OK, not great, and her SAT score was only 1100). Of the 47, 42 of them were white. Yes, you read that correctly- 42 were white. 5 were black or Latino. Also, there were 168 black or latino students who scored HIGHER than Fisher...

To say this project has changed me is an understatement. I have tried to show how racism exists not just in police brutality (though obviously that is a major problem that needs to be addressed), but also in every facet of our lives: housing, education, health care, voting, the work force, farming, military, public transportation, sports, politics, jury selection, incarceration rates, and everywhere in between. I have tried to show that racism is literally in the air we breathe. If you missed that, please go back and start from the beginning and read what I have shared very slowly. I have literally spent hundreds of hours researching, watching documentaries, listening to Podcasts, and reading, reading, reading. I have been brought to my knees many times. I have prayed harder than I ever thought possible that the God I love and believe in will somehow hold people of color in His arms and somehow make this all right in the end. I have had a knot in my chest- a stress and pressure of lear...