Before this week’s readings, I didn’t know the extent to which prisons play into capitalism and economy. I knew about the premise of profitable prisons, but I didn’t realize how entrenched they were in the American way of life. I don’t know why I’m only realizing this right now, but…

In considering Lloyd’s piece, I had not viewed this time in history as an apocalyptic era. It may certainly seem that way, but every generation has had its fair share of struggles. If this is the apocalypse, I can only imagine what slaves thought their reality was. It would be…

For the most part, I knew the least about the intersection of gender and religion in BLM. We learned about the differences in leadership between the Civil Rights era and the BLM movement, but I did not explicitly consider the challenges women, and especially queer women, had to face to…

I think the documentary, in addition to showing the history of the BLM movement, presented some key takeaway points that I did not know too well. This is a very young movement, so there is bound to be a learning curve and at least a few mistakes. Learning how to…

I did not fully understand the meaning of signified in Long’s piece, but what I think is critical is the idea that racism can be manifested in both subtle and obvious ways. Racism does not exist as its own separate entity, and instead appears in aspects of history, rhetoric, and…

James Cone makes some very powerful statements about Christianity in his 1970 theology of religion. He proclaims that in its white version, it serves to sanction genocide and enslavement. This has been evidenced in the colonists’ treatment of Native Americans and the history of slavery. By comparison, an arguably more…

For this medium post I want to focus more on “The Wake.” Her story was very eye-opening in a way that made me reflect on the privilege I have experienced in my life. I have never experienced any tragedy close to what she has had to experience, and am thankful…

While reading about mass incarceration in Michelle Alexander’s book, I couldn’t help but think about president Trump’s attack ads on Joe Biden concerning police funding. This is interesting, because the motivations for increasing police activity are not dissimilar from the motivations for mass incarceration. Both are predicated on the idea…

DuBois talks about reconciling two seemingly contradictory figures in the Freedman and the American. He says there is a desire to merge two aspects of being black and being American without losing either in a flood of the other. In a brief conclusion, DuBois says that the black struggle is…