Categories
Blog

In Defense of Strategy and Against Property Damage…For Now

There’s a debate being waged over protest tactics, with the side in support of escalating tactics, or at least of not standing in the way of escalation, making their case along the lines of this article, In Defense of Property Damage, published in The Nation. The debate is largely academic in the sense that it addresses questions of theory and principle, not strategy and tactics in the context of specific struggles. What’s the difference and what does it mean in regard to how we answer the question, how far should we escalate tactics before we go too far?
Read more “In Defense of Strategy and Against Property Damage…For Now”
Categories
Blog

#snowblindness

I highly recommend this feature in the Atlantic – The Racist History of Portland, the Whitest City in America. We can learn a lot about racism by looking at those places that are the whitest.

In Portland, the belief that we are “post-racial” is largely unopposed, and those who point out problems of racial injustice are often treated as if they are just seeing things, as delusional or “divisive.”

In Portland, the city I’ve often referred to as Whitelandia over the 30 years since I first moved here in 1986, there is very little to contradict these ideas and,

Read more “#snowblindness”
Categories
Blog

Why I Write What I Write

I’m often asked why I write a race blog. I get why folks ask the question. I would get more looks by writing about food justice or climate change, and I know a little something about those subjects, too. Yet I write about race. Why?

I grew up in rural Hawai’i. My childhood and young adult years were spent in a community that was almost entirely made up of people of color. White people owned most of the land and dominated the economy, but in little towns like mine, they were extreme minorities and treated mainly as outsiders.

When I … Read more “Why I Write What I Write”