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Former secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen made an appearance at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C., to much controversy. (Review here raceAhead advice on how to survive difficult, but sometimes necessary, conversations.)
Professor Anita Hill, in conversation with raceAhead’s Ellen McGirt, offered a reminder of how the separation of children from their families is an issue that has deep historical roots, far beyond being a topic “of this moment.”
“I think it needs to be put in historical context for its real meaning in this country,” she said. Family separation, Hill explained, “was a mainstay of slavery.”
“[Family separation] wasn’t imposed by the government, but the government enforced it by enforcing slavery,” she said. “So, people couldn’t escape it. Families couldn’t escape it and it has an ongoing impact, I believe, on the descendants of the slaves whose families were separated.” It became a cruel tactic, whose aim “was to dehumanize people, so that they could be treated like cattle during slavery.” And, in the 19th and 20th century, family separation was forced on Native American populations, through so-called Indian schools, in an attempt to “de-culturalize them, take them away from their tribal identities, and to strip them of that.”
This was done with an aim to “train them to be in service of wealthier, and typically white individuals,” she said.
Hill offered this context as a primer to the conversation with Nielsen which happened later that day. Make no mistake, she said, family separation hasn’t changed.
“We have its use today, in policy against immigrants, against asylum seekers to, I believe, shape the political identity of this country, to decide or help imprint in the minds of people who belongs and who doesn’t. It’s not only, I believe, a human rights violation but I think it’s just bad policy because we don’t know the long-term impact. We never learned the lessons from slavery and from the treatment of Native populations. And, of course, it has a racial element that cannot be denied.”
More MPW coverage here.
Tamara El-Waylly
tamara.elwaylly@fortune.com
Ellen McGirt curated and wrote the blurbs in this edition of raceAhead.
On Point
Black students from the University of Connecticut demand change after racial incident Black students have been pushing for action after an 11-second video of white students walking on campus shouting the n-word was recorded and posted by a Black student on social media. It took a march and rally over the incident for campus police to make an arrest; students say that racist acts are commonplace, and the administration is doing little to address them. "Contrary to what many may believe, racism is alive and well at UConn and beyond," said the editorial board of the campus newspaper in an opinion piece.
Vox
Twitch CEO is betting he can keep people safe online Twitch is the most popular live-streaming platform in the world, and as a result, they’re in the position to try to manage hate speech and harassment in online communities. CEO Emmett Shear is prepared to try. In a keynote at the most recent TwitchCon conference, he announced some big changes—including new moderation tools and enforcement actions—designed to help enforce safe interactions on both the individual and platform level. "We decided we had to do better," he said. This stands in stark contrast to other platforms, notes The Verge’s Bijan Stephen, referring to the ones who let politicians lie in ads or otherwise fail to consistently enforce even vague behavioral standards.
The Verge
Black women are less likely to follow a breast cancer follow-up treatment plan A study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, identifies a possible reason: Black women are less likely to be able to afford the costly endocrine therapies that are prescribed for certain types of breast cancer than white women. It can cut the risk of recurrence in half but needs to be taken for years after initial treatment. Although more research is required as to why the black women stopped or took breaks from the treatment, the risks are clear. Breast cancer is less common in black women, yet they're about 40% more likely to die from the disease than white women.
NPR
On Background
Lynching is racial terrorism Lynching is back in the news, in word not deed, bandied about by fools who never seem to understand how deeply inappropriate it is as a metaphor. Karin D. Berry knows the truth. Her maternal great-great-grandfather, Charles Brown, was taken from the cellar of his employer’s house and hanged by an angry white mob in Mississippi in 1879, 78 years before she was born. "What I imagine about his slaying is vivid, painful and sometimes difficult to talk about because I struggle not to cry," she says. I think of his terror at being forced into the woods… I am certain he felt betrayed and angry as he looked at his killers, whom he almost certainly knew or may have worked for as a carpenter." This is the story of Berry and her family, who traveled to mourn Brown at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, to claim his history and make sure we remember what lynching is.
The Undefeated
'The New Yorker' has a new short documentary series The first of which is “Departing Gesture,” an 11-minute film which focuses on the noble work of Trey Sebrell, who runs the Trebrell Funeral Home, in Ridgeland, Miss. He has taken on the quiet practice of caring for deceased people who had lived with HIV/AIDS, and who have been abandoned by their families. "It happens more than you think," a man’s says, in a voice-over. "Maybe ten or twelve deaths a year, I think, where their family would abandon them and never come back." Bring tissues.
New Yorker
Maybe 'To Kill a Mockingbird' isn’t the best way to talk about racism Lots of people quietly take issue with the book and its unwavering place in the pantheon of classic literature. Andray Domise, a Toronto-based freelance writer, outlines a not unfamiliar discussion in academic circles. Is To Kill a Mockingbird really the best way to introduce race and racism to white schoolchildren? For some teachers involved in the debate, the desire by some parents to replace it with other novels for the purpose of illuminating race is tantamount to censorship. "To be clear, To Kill a Mockingbird is a well-written book," he says. "As a teaching narrative on the reality of race, however, it is helplessly facile and ill-suited."
The Globe and Mail
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Quote
“The men who make these charges encourage or lead the mobs which do the lynching. They belong to the race which holds Negro life cheap, which owns the telegraph wires, newspapers, and all other communication with the outside world. They write the reports which justify lynching by painting the Negro as black as possible, and those reports are accepted by the press associations and the world without question or investigation. The mob spirit had increased with alarming frequency and violence. Over a thousand black men, women, and children have been thus sacrificed the past ten years. Masks have long since been thrown aside and the lynchings of the present day take place in broad daylight. The sheriffs, police, and state officials stand by and see the work done well… Three human beings were burned alive in civilized America during the first six months of this year (1893). Over one hundred have been lynched in this half year. They were hanged, then cut, shot, and burned.”
