Cecil Rhodes was born #OTD in 1853. Rhodes, a British imperialist whose brutal rule killed and dispossessed millions in southern Africa, inspired White American supremacists, such as the Charleston church shooter and the propagator of “anti-racist is code for anti-White.” A 🧵1/
Rhodes was born on July 5, 1853 in Hertfordshire, England. From 1890 to 1896, he was the Prime Minister of England's Cape Colony, what is now South Africa. He also organized and owned De Beers Consolidated Mines, which had a market share of 90% of the world’s diamonds by 1891. 2/
Rhodes’s company routinely subjected African miners to exploitative and fatal working conditions, practices that aligned with Rhodes's belief that "nine-tenths of [Africans] will have to spend their lives in daily labour... the sooner that is brought home to them, the better." 3/
Rhodes considered it God’s will for him to “paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible.” In 1889, he granted a charter to the British South Africa Company, giving it authority to colonize modern-day Zimbabwe and Zambia. The colony became known as Rhodesia. 4/
In Rhodesia and the Cape Colony, the government brutally dispossessed the indigenous African population. A series of laws passed under Rhodes in both colonies prevented African people from land ownership, civic participation, and high-wage labor. 5/
When Rhodes died in 1902, he left a legacy of White supremacy. The racist legislation he put in place tilled the ground for the apartheid system that officially began in South Africa in 1948. The colonies of Rhodesia did not gain independence from British rule until 1980. 6/
People have been organizing against Rhodes's legacy. The Rhodes Must Fall campaign removed a Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town in 2015. Another campaign is afoot to rename Rhodes University. But the Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford remains coveted around the world. 7/
Rhodesia has now become popular among White supremacists. Merchandise circulates online with slogans such as “Make Zimbabwe Rhodesia Again”. This celebration of Rhodesia is emblematic of the White supremacist desire for a colonial, White ethno-state. 8/
In 2015, Dylann Roof murdered nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof had a White supremacist website named The Last Rhodesian and posted photos of himself wearing the Rhodesian flag. 9/
Residing in Roof’s hometown was another admirer of Rhodesia, the late Bob Whitaker. He authored an online screed in 2006 called "The Mantra" that rallied White supremacists worldwide. Its most famous line is a GOP talking point: “anti-racist is a code word for anti-White.” 10/10
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The term "race conscious," as a descriptor for affirmative action, is as flawed as the term "race neutral" for the other admission metrics, as @DrUJayakumar and I explain @TheAtlantic. "Race conscious" reinforces the "race neutral" and "colorblind" frame. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Affirmative-action policies are antiracist because they reduce racial inequities, while many of the other admissions metrics, like legacies, test scores, and boosts for relatives of employees and donors, are racist because they maintain racial inequities. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
Anti-affirmative action litigants and judges do not want to talk about the outcomes of their actions. Because it becomes obvious they banned affirmative action because it did not benefit White and wealthy students as much as the other admission metrics. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
In banning affirmative action, the Supreme Court has *not* banned using race in college admissions. "Race neutral" is a legal fantasy, the latest to conserve racism. As Uma Jayakumar and I write @TheAtlantic, “race neutral” is the new “separate but equal.” theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The idea of "race neutral" admission metrics, like test scores, is a fantasy, like the Court doctrine that segregated schools were “separate but equal.” We show how several admission metrics disadvantage Black, Latinx, Native, and many Asian students. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The Court effectively outlawed affirmative action, which closes racial inequities in admissions, leaving the metrics that have long led to racial inequities in college admissions. The result: a normality of racial inequity. Sanctioned by the Court. Again. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
This #PrideMonth, it is important to recognize non-binary and gender nonconforming people have been here from the beginning of the U.S. Here is a thread on one of the most influential such persons in early America. An abolitionist minister known as The Public Universal Friend. 1/
The Friend was a Christian preacher who lived from 1752 to 1819. Assigned female at birth and given the name Jemima Wilkinson, later in life this person eschewed gendered pronouns, preferring to be addressed as "the Friend." 2/
The Friend was born into a big White family of Rhode Island Quakers, the eighth of twelve children. In October 1776, they became ill with "Columbus fever," likely typhus. Captured British soldiers on a Navy vessel docked in Providence had brought the disease to the area. 3/
With elections looming, in some US states it is harder to vote than it was a decade ago, particularly for people of color. Because #OTD 10 years ago in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, leading to a flood of voter suppression. A🧵1/
The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) prevented racist voter suppression policies through "federal preclearance." The VRA required that districts with long histories of electoral racism submit any proposed changes to their voting procedures to the federal government for approval. 2/
Instead of voters of color harmed by new voting policies having to sue, lawmakers had to prove that new voting policies would not harm voters. And because the VRA had been effective for decades in stopping voter suppression, officials in Shelby County, Alabama, sued in 2011. 3/
As we celebrate #Juneteenth, let us keep in mind that African Americans during the Civil War distinguished between *abolishing slavery* and *freeing people.* Many formerly enslaved people did not feel *free* in 1865 and thereafter, and they clearly articulated why. A thread 1/
On January 12, 1865, General William T. Sherman met with twenty Black leaders in Savannah, Georgia, over the future of African Americans in the area. These African Americans gave this Union general a crash course on their definitions of slavery and freedom. 2/
Slavery meant “receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent,” said the group’s spokesman, Garrison Frazier. Freedom was “placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor.” To accomplish this—to be truly free—we must “have land.” 3/
The paperback edition of HOW TO RAISE AN ANTIRACIST is out! In time for Father’s Day. This is without question my most vulnerable book. Hitting closer to home than any other. Let me explain. A thread 1/ penguinrandomhouse.com/books/671925/h…
Hardly anything is more important to me as a parent and teacher, than protecting vulnerable children from racist messages—verbal and non-verbal. And we won’t be able to protect our children if we continue to believe—against all evidence to the contrary—that our kids. . . 2/
. . .won’t ever internalize any of the racist messages polluting their environment, won’t ever connect positive and negative traits to skin colors, won’t ever subject others to or be subjected to racist bullying, won’t ever see racist posts on social media, 3/