Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 67
The 2020 uprisings have also seen thousands of white
people hit the streets and call for an end to systemic
racism. Perhaps greater numbers of white people, from
all economic backgrounds, are realizing that the racist
policies our lawmakers adopt to benefit big industries also
render them disposable.12
•••
1. Joseph Lowndes, “‘Their Tactics Are Fascistic’: Barr Slams Black Lives Matter, Accuses the Left of
‘Tearing Down the System,’” The Washington Post, Aug. 10, 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/
nation/2020/08/10/barr-fox-antifa-blm/
2. Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui and Jugal K. Patel, “Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement
in U.S. History,” The New York Times, July 3, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/03/us/
george-floyd-protests-crowd-size.html
3. Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Derrick Bryson Taylor, “Here’s What You Need to Know About Breonna
Taylor’s Death,” The New York Times, Sept. 15, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/article/breonna-taylorpolice.html
But we are living through, at this moment, a call for a
reckoning.
4. Ibid
5. Christina Carrega, “What You Need to Know About the Breonna Taylor Case and Calls for
Justice,” CNN, Sept. 23, 2020: https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/breonna-taylor-announcement/h_
f87c4e2fc9e1d3457dba4b826ae182f0
Black voices throughout our society are challenging
systems of oppression on a scale we have not witnessed
in half a century. This includes Black journalists who
are calling for fundamental change at major white news
organizations they work for. Despite the presence of many
gifted and accomplished Black journalists in our nation’s
newsrooms, power disparities remain.
6. Lucy Tompkins, “Here’s What You Need to Know About Elijah McClain’s Death,” The New York Times,
Aug. 16, 2020: https://www.nytimes.com/article/who-was-elijah-mcclain.html; Claire Lampen, “What We
Know About the Killing of Elijah McClain,” The Cut, Aug. 11, 2020: https://www.thecut.com/2020/08/thekilling-of-elijah-mcclain-everything-we-know.html
7. Ed Pilkington, “Black Americans Dying of COVID-19 at Three Times the Rate of White People,” The
Guardian, May 20, 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/black-americans-death-ratecovid-19-coronavirus
8. Renee C. Worth, Marcelius L. Braxton and C. Lee Cohen, “Racism and COVID-19 Threaten Our Health
— We Can’t Fight Them as Separate Battles,” The Guardian, June 29, 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2020/jun/29/racism-coronavirus-covid-19-black-brown-america
9. Samantha Masunaga and Taylor Avery, “Black-Owned Businesses Face a System Set Up Against Them.
COVID-19 Makes It Worse,” The Los Angeles Times, June 20, 2020: https://www.latimes.com/business/
story/2020-06-20/black-owned-business-loans-banks; Robert Fairlie, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Small
Business Owners: Evidence of Early-Stage Losses from the April 2020 Current Populations Survey,”
National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2020: https://www.nber.org/papers/w27309.pdf
10. Heather Long, “Calls Grow for the Federal Reserve to Target Lowering the Black Unemployment
Rate,” The Washington Post, June 10, 2020: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/10/
black-unemployment-rate-fed/; Suzanne Gamboa, “Latinos Still Have Highest Unemployment Rate,
as Joblessness Drops Slightly,” NBC News, June 5, 2020: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/
unemployment-still-highest-among-latinos-joblessness-drops-slightly-n1225861; “Table A-2, Economic
News Release,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, last modified on Aug. 7, 2020: https://www.bls.gov/
news.release/empsit.t02.htm; “Table A-3, Economic News Release,” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, last
modified Aug. 7, 2020: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t03.htm
11. “The Time Has Come to Defund the Police,” Movement for Black Lives, accessed on Aug. 12, 2020:
https://m4bl.org/defund-the-police/
12. Gene Demby, “Why Now, White People,” NPR, June 16, 2020: https://www.npr.
org/2020/06/16/878963732/why-now-white-people
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