War On Drugs

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 49 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is The War On Drugs. “The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by dramatically increasing prison sentences for both drug dealers and users. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today.” The War on Drugs was popularized by Richard Nixon who said, "If we cannot destroy the drug menace in America, then it will surely in time destroy us," Nixon told Congress in 1971. "I am not prepared to accept this alternative." This drug war has led to consequences that have proliferated violence around the world and contributed to mass incarceration in the US. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

The War On Drugs: The War on Drugs is a phrase used to refer to a government-led initiative that aims to stop illegal drug use, distribution and trade by dramatically increasing prison sentences for both drug dealers and users. The movement started in the 1970s and is still evolving today.

The Drug Scheduling System: Under the Controlled Substances Act, the federal government — which has largely relegated the regulation of drugs to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — puts each drug into a classification, known as a schedule, based on its medical value and potential for abuse. You can view the current Drug Schedules here.

Let’s Get Into It

Drug Use In America Before The “War On Drugs”

• According to historian Peter Knight, opium largely came over to America with Chinese immigrants on the West Coast. Americans, already skeptical of the drug, quickly latched on to xenophobic beliefs that opium somehow made Chinese immigrants dangerous.

• Cocaine was similarly attached in fear to Black communities, neuroscientist Carl Hart wrote for the Nation. The belief was so widespread that the New York Times even felt comfortable writing headlines in 1914 that claimed "Negro cocaine 'fiends' are a new southern menace."

• Drug use for medicinal and recreational purposes has been happening in the United States since the country’s inception. In the 1890s, the popular Sears and Roebuck catalogue included an offer for a syringe and small amount of cocaine for $1.50.

• In some states, laws to ban or regulate drugs were passed in the 1800s, and the first congressional act to levy taxes on morphine and opium took place in 1890.

• The Smoking Opium Exclusion Act in 1909 banned the possession, importation and use of opium for smoking.

• In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Act, which regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates and cocaine.

• In 1919, the 18th Amendment was ratified, banning the manufacture, transportation or sale of intoxicating liquors, ushering in the Prohibition Era. The same year, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act (also known as the Volstead Act), which provided guidelines on how to federally enforce Prohibition.

• In 1937, the “Marihuana Tax Act” was passed. This federal law placed a tax on the sale of cannabis, hemp, or marijuana. While the law didn’t criminalize the possession or use of marijuana, it included hefty penalties if taxes weren’t paid, including a fine of up to $2000 and five years in prison.

The War On Drugs

• President Richard M. Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) into law in 1970.

• In June 1971, Nixon officially declared a “War on Drugs,” stating that drug abuse was “public enemy number one.”

• Nixon went on to create the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in 1973.

• In the mid-1970s, the War on Drugs took a slight hiatus. Between 1973 and 1977, eleven states decriminalized marijuana possession.

• Jimmy Carter became president in 1977 after running on a political campaign to decriminalize marijuana.

• In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan reinforced and expanded many of Nixon’s War on Drugs policies. In 1984, his wife Nancy Reagan launched the “Just Say No” campaign, which was intended to highlight the dangers of drug use.

• In 1986, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which established mandatory minimum prison sentences for certain drug offenses.

• On September 5, 1989, in his first televised national address as president, George H.W. Bush called drugs "the greatest domestic threat facing our nation today," held up a bag of seized crack cocaine, and vowed to escalate funding for the war on drugs. He later approved, among other drug-related policies, the 1033 program (then known as the 1208 program) that equipped local and state police with military-grade equipment for anti-drug operations.

It’s Impact On Incarceration And Racist History

• The escalation of the criminal justice system's reach over the past few decades, ranging from more incarceration to seizures of private property and militarization, can be traced back to the war on drugs. After the US stepped up the drug war throughout the 1970s and '80s, harsher sentences for drug offenses played a role in turning the country into the world's leader in incarceration.

• During a 1994 interview, President Nixon’s domestic policy chief, John Ehrlichman, provided inside information suggesting that the War on Drugs campaign had ulterior motives, he was quoted saying:

“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.”

• When the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act was passed, it was heavily criticized as having racist ramifications because it allocated longer prison sentences for offenses involving the same amount of crack cocaine (used more often by Black Americans) as powder cocaine (used more often by white Americans). 5 grams of crack triggered an automatic 5 year sentence, while it took 500 grams of powder cocaine to merit the same sentence.

• Critics pointed to data showing that people of color were targeted and arrested on suspicion of drug use at higher rates than whites.

• Overall, the policies led to a rapid rise in incarcerations for nonviolent drug offenses, from 50,000 in 1980 to 400,000 in 1997. In 2014, nearly half of the 186,000 people serving time in federal prisons in the United States had been incarcerated on drug-related charges, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

• The number of Black men in prison (792,000) has already equaled the number of men enslaved in 1820. With the current momentum of the drug war fueling an ever expanding prison-industrial complex, if current trends continue, only 15 years remain before the United States incarcerates as many African-American men as were forced into chattel bondage at slavery's peak, in 1860.

The War On Drugs Today

• Today, the US still continues to have the largest prison population on the planet. Learn more about it in my newsletters on Prison Reform.

• Between 2009 and 2013, some 40 states took steps to soften their drug laws, lowering penalties and shortening mandatory minimum sentences, according to the Pew Research Center.

• In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act (FSA), which reduced the discrepancy between crack and powder cocaine offenses from 100:1 to 18:1.

• The recent legalization of marijuana in several states and the District of Columbia has also led to a more tolerant political view on recreational drug use. However, estimated 40,000 people today are incarcerated for marijuana offenses even as the overall legal cannabis industry is booming; one state after another is legalizing; and cannabis companies are making healthy profits.

• Although Black communities aren't more likely to use or sell drugs, they are much more likely to be arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses.

• A 2014 study from Peter Reuter at the University of Maryland and Harold Pollack at the University of Chicago found there's no good evidence that tougher punishments or harsher supply-elimination efforts do a better job of pushing down access to drugs and substance abuse than lighter penalties.

• Most of the reduction in accessibility from the drug war appears to be a result of the simple fact that drugs are illegal, which by itself makes drugs more expensive and less accessible by eliminating avenues toward mass production and distribution.

• Enforcing the war on drugs costs the US more than $51 billion each year, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. As of 2012, the US had spent $1 trillion on anti-drug efforts.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

The Racist History of BMI

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 44 of this newsletter. This week’s topic is The Racist History of the Body Mass Index (BMI). Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet was a statistician (not a medical professional) who sought the specifications for the “average man” or l’homme moyen by predominantly measuring white men—and no women—to find a bell curve of data where the peak was considered “normal” and “everything differing from his proportion or condition, would constitute deformity or disease…or monstrosity.” This was during a boom of scientific racism and Quetelet is credited with co-founding the school of positivist criminology which laid the groundwork for criminologists like Cesare Lombroso, who believed that people of color were a separate species. The Quetelet Index took into account Quetelet’s ideal man based on body type, but was never supposed to be a measure of health. Remember, he was a statistician, and this index was designed to learn more about the average body size of the general male population.

Read more to learn how this index quickly became the BMI after insurance companies needed a way to determine a person’s coverage and refuse the “overweight”. When this system was designed with white men in mind (literally like everything else), it’s no wonder marginalized groups are misdiagnosed, discriminated against and shamed for their BMI, when the index was never created with their bodies in mind. Black women are especially demonized by the BMI scale, being the largest at-risk group based on the index—no shock there. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

BMI (Body Mass Index): BMI is defined by the CDC as “a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters. BMI is an inexpensive and easy screening method for weight category—underweight, healthy weight, overweight, and obesity…BMI can be a screening tool, but it does not diagnose the body fatness or health of an individual. To determine if BMI is a health risk, a healthcare provider performs further assessments.”

Quetelet Index: Quetelet’s cross-sectional studies of human growth led him to conclude that other than the spurts of growth after birth and during puberty, 'the weight increases as the square of the height', known as the Quetelet Index until it was termed the Body Mass Index in 1972 by Ancel Keys (1904-2004).

Weight Bias: Negative attitudes, beliefs, judgments, stereotypes, and discriminatory acts aimed at individuals simply because of their weight. It can be overt or subtle and occur in any setting, including employment, healthcare, education, mass media and relationships with family and friends.

Obesity Stigma: Obesity stigma involves actions against people with obesity that can cause exclusion and marginalization, and lead to inequities – for example, when people with obesity do not receive adequate health care or when they are discriminated against in the workplace or in educational settings.

Obesity: The CDC describes obesity as " a serious chronic disease, and the prevalence of obesity continues to increase in the United States. Obesity is common, serious, and costly. This epidemic is putting a strain on American families, affecting overall health, health care costs, productivity, and military readiness.” They continue with, “Obesity impacts our nation’s health, economy, and military readiness…About 1 in 5 children and more than 1 in 3 adults struggle with obesity…Nearly 1 in 4 young adults are too heavy to serve in our military.” It also states on the CDC website, “weight that is higher than what is considered healthy for a given height is described as overweight or obesity. Body Mass Index (BMI) is a screening tool for overweight and obesity.”

Let’s Get Into It

The Origin Of BMI

• Lambert Adolphe Jacques (22 February 1796 – 17 February 1874) was a mathematician, astrologer and statistician in Belgium during the mid-19th century.

• He wanted to categorize the average man” (l’homme moyen, in French) and define what he looked like, an idea that already hinted that some people were inherently below average and, therefore, inferior to others.

• Quetelet is credited with co-founding the school of positivist criminology, “which asserted the dangerousness of the criminal to be the only measure of the extent to which he was punishable.” That positivist school laid the groundwork for criminologists like Cesare Lombroso, who believed that people of color were a separate species. Homo Criminalis, Lombroso argued, were “savages” by birth, identified by physical characteristics that he claimed linked them to primates. This was the booming era of scientific racism — read my newsletter on that here.

• “If the average man were completely determined, we might consider him as the type of perfection,” he wrote in his book A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties. “And everything differing from his proportion or condition, would constitute deformity or disease ... or monstrosity.”

• Quetelet believed that the mathematical mean of a population was its ideal, and his desire to prove it resulted in the invention of the Index, a way of quantifying l’homme moyen’s weight.

• He created the Quetelet Index by using a calculation involving a weight-to-height ratio and set out to determine "the ideal."

• He started with human physical features, like the chests of Scottish Highland regiment soldiers, and moved on to moral and intellectual qualities including suicide, crime, madness, and even poetic ability.

• The features measured primarily were those of caucasian men. (I can’t find any research that mentions ANY non-white men whatsoever, but also haven’t found anything that definitively says it was ONLY white men.)

• Instead of labelling the peak of the bell-curve as merely normal, he labelled it ‘ideal’, with those deviating either ‘overweight’ or ‘underweight’ instead of heavier than average or lighter than average. He envisioned the normal (i.e., typical) as the ideal or something desirable.

• Quetelet never intended that this index be used to measure a person’s health or wellness. “Initially it was used to categorize people and look at the distribution of a population,” says Diana Thomas, Ph.D., a professor of mathematics at West Point.

• “By the turn of the next century, Quetelet’s l’homme moyen would be used as a measurement of fitness to parent, and as a scientific justification for eugenics — the systemic sterilization of disabled people, autistic people, immigrants, poor people, and people of color.”

How Did BMI Become The Standard In Medicine?

• In the late 20th century, health and life insurance companies adopted the Quetelet Index to replace their own height-weight tables (which were already based on stats drawn from mostly white men and some white women).

• At the time, it seemed “simplest and most informative to express the weight of the individual as a percentage of the average weight of persons of the same height, age and sex in the population to which he belongs. That was the reasoning that led to publication of standard height-weight tables by the life insurance industry, beginning with the Medico-Actuarial Mortality Investigations of 1912.”

• Insurers could use this information to determine a person’s coverage and could refuse to cover the “overweight” while many doctors saw these “medico-actuarial tables” as a quick tool to decide who they’d take on as a patient.

• In 1972, Ancel Keys, a physiologist who studied diet, claimed he had a tool that was more accurate then the previously mentioned height-weight tables.

• Keys and his colleagues did a large study on fatness, looking at predominantly white European and American men and concluded that the Quetelet Index, or the “body mass index,” was the most useful tool.

• The researchers’ subjects were drawn from predominantly white nations (the United States, Finland, Italy), along with Japan and South Africa, though their study notes that findings in South Africa “could not be suggested to be a representative sample of Bantu men.” Most of their findings, the authors note, apply to “all but the Bantu men.” That is, Keys’ findings weren’t representative of, or applicable to, non white men. Today, there is a push for Asian populations to have a different scale for BMI, proving that even the Japanese subjects used in this study were not the intended demographic.

Problems With Using BMI As A Measure Of Health

• When white men are the standard for “normal” and “ideal” bodies and their dimensions are seen as the most healthy, it’s no wonder other racial groups and genders are viewed as abnormal.

• The standards for BMI, based on the bodies of white men, have been applies globally, “like in Central Africa where white people are the minority.”

• According to an article from NPR, the formula for BMI itself is nonsensical. “There is no physiological reason to square a person's height. Moreover, it ignores waist size, which is a clear indicator of obesity level.”

• It is physiologically incorrect because “it makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body.”

• Global acceptance of BMI doesn’t take into account that higher or lower BMI might be more appropriate for certain groups. “A large 2003 study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), for example, has shown that higher BMIs tend to be more optimal for Black people, and that Black women don’t necessarily show a significant rise mortality risk until a BMI of 37.”

• Many people with “high” BMIs are healthy. 47% of people categorized as having overweight BMI are metabolically healthy. Using BMI perpetuates weight bias. Claiming “obesity is bad” without considering other “genetic, social and environmental factors harms more than it heals.”

• Maria Monge, M.D., director of Adolescent Medicine at Dell Children’s Medical Center, says: “Many of my [larger-bodied] patients have been told that they’re not healthy, but when I checked their labs and vital signs, everything was pristine,” says Dr. Monge. “The only thing that was out of the range considered 'normal' was their BMI.”

BMI And Its Negative Impact On Marginalized Groups

• BMI doesn’t take into account important social factors related to health. "One of the greatest predictors of health outcomes is socioeconomic status,” says to Kim Gould, MS, LMFT, a therapist, a Health at Every Size personal trainer, and the owner of Autonomy Movement. “Socioeconomic status tells us whether we can afford health care, have access to medical treatment, nutritious foods, and opportunities to move our bodies. It also determines our quality of sleep and how high our anxiety levels are. If our bodies are in a state of fight or flight and there’s cortisol pumping through our systems long-term, that’s destructive."

• BMI is especially problematic for Black women. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health (OHM), Black women have the highest rates of "obesity" and being “overweight.” These health assessments often fail to consider how chronic stress, economic inequality and institutionalized racism affect Black women in America, never mind the fact that these index was designed with white men in mind.

• Studies show that “racial discrimination is associated with increased body mass index (BMI) and obesity among [ethnic minorities]…[and] this association strengthens with increasing time in the United States.”

I know many friends, coworkers and fitness professionals read my newsletter. Friends, let’s do better for our communities, clients and for ourselves. While we have all become accustomed to hopping on the scale for our yearly physicals, it’s not even necessary for patients to be weighed unless their prescription dosage is based on body mass or for specific medical tests. We need to break the cycle of fat stigma, discrimination and sexism that the Body Mass Index perpetuates. See ya next time!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

The Black Panther Party

“Black people need some peace. White people need some peace. And we are going to have to fight. We’re going to have to struggle. We’re going to have to struggle relentlessly to bring about some peace, because the people that we’re asking for peace, they are a bunch of megalomaniac warmongers, and they don’t even understand what peace means.”

— Fred Hampton

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 36 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is The Black Panther Party. Writing this newsletter was a clear reminder of why I began writing in the first place, because knowing our history matters, especially when the truth is constantly denied to us through the American public education system. The brief, yet impactful legacy of the BPP is both inspiring and devastating. The assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton has brought me to tears on more than one occasion. The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale and the first point of their Ten Point Platform and Program was “We want freedom.” In 1968, the FBI’s first director, J. Edgar Hoover called the Black Panthers, “One of the greatest threats to the nation’s internal security,” because they were angry, organized and defiant. COINTELPRO wanted the Black Panthers exterminated, disgraced and omitted from the history books — and largely succeeded. Today, we focus on the truth of their legacy. Let’s get into it.

Let’s Get Into It

Who Were The Black Panthers?

• Founded in 1966 in Oakland, California, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP) was the era’s most influential militant Black power organization.

• Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense with a slogan of “Power to the People.”

• They were inspired by Malcom X and drew on Marxist ideology. The Civil Rights Movement seemed aimed at the Jim Crow South to Seale and Newton, and they wanted to create a movement in the North and the West.

• While the Black Panthers were often portrayed as a gang, their leadership saw the organization as a political party whose goal was getting more African Americans elected to political office.

• They wore leather jackets, black berets and walked in lock step formations.

• They were a sophisticated political organization comprised of predominantly uneducated, young, poor, disenfranchised Black people who realized that through organization and discipline, they could use their talents and resources to make a real impact in their community.

• They had a radical political agenda compared to non-violence advocates like Martin Luther King Jr (least we forget King was hated, a target of the FBI, assassinated and murdered).

• While the Civil Rights Movement sought equality, the Black Power Movement assumed equality of person, and sought the opportunity to express that equality through pride.

• Women made up about half of the Panther membership and often held leadership roles.

• At its peak in 1968, the Black Panther Party had roughly 2,000 members.

• The party enrolled the most members and had the most influence in the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia.

• They worked with many non-Black folks and organizations, with Bobby Seale stating: “The biggest misconception is the FBI said that the Black Panthers hated all white folks. How could we hate white folks when we protested along with thousands of our white left radical and white liberal friends? We worked in coalition with each other, in coalition with the Asian community organizations and coalition with Native American community organizations, in coalition with Hispanic, Puerto Ricans and brown [people]. I had coalitions with 39 different organizational groups crossing all racial and organizational lines.”

The Ten Point Platform

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.

2. We want full employment for our people.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the Capitalists of our Black Community.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.

8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

Why Were They Feared By White America?

• The New York Times wrote an article claiming responsibility for their portrayal of The Black Panther Party, stating: “The media, like most of white America, was deeply frightened by their aggressive and assertive style of protest,” Professor Rhodes said. “And they were offended by it.”

• The media called them “antiwhite” (though the Panthers frequently called on ALL Americans to fight for equality) and constantly focused on their guns and militant style.

• When discussing clashes with police, the media focused on the altercation, not the critique of police brutality — something Black America continues to deal with to this day. What went largely unreported was the fact that these conflicts stemmed not just from the Panthers, but also from the federal government.

• It was not until years later that the Senate’s Church Committee would show how pervasively the F.B.I. worked against the Panthers and how much it influenced press coverage. It encouraged urban police forces to confront Black Panthers; planted informants and agents provocateurs; and intimidated local community members who were sympathetic to the group. The Panther-police conflict that inevitably followed played directly into the narrative that had been established: that the party was a provocative, dangerous organization.

What Did The Black Panthers Do?

• Although created as a response to police brutality, the Black Panther Party quickly expanded to advocate for other social reforms:

  • Local chapters of the Panthers, often led by women, focused attention on community “survival programs.”

  • A free breakfast program for 20,000 children each day as well as a free food program for families and the elderly.

  • They sponsored schools, legal aid offices, clothing distribution, local transportation, and health clinics and sickle-cell testing centers.

  • They created Freedom Schools in nine cities including the noteworthy Oakland Community School.

• They practiced copwatching, observing and documenting police activity in Black communities. They often did this with loaded firearms because they advocated for armed self defense. The BPP rejected nonviolence as both a tactic and a philosophy, emphasizing instead the importance of physical survival to the continuing struggle for civil and human rights.

Prominent Members

• Huey P. Newton

• Bobby Seale

• Angela Davis

• Fred Hampton

• Stokely Carmichael/ Kwame Ture

• Elaine Brown

How Were They Destroyed?

• The Mulford Act of 1967 in California was a state-level initiative that prohibited the open carry of loaded firearms in public spaces as a direct response to the BPP. The Black Panther Party sparked fear among policymakers, who translated these anxieties into legislation designed to undermine this social activism. Because the BPP relied on strategies (like having firearms) that were not widely used by mainstream civil rights activists, the group faced new forms of legal repression. Policymakers successfully employed gun control legislation to undercut the BPP. By criminalizing the BPP’s use of weapons on California streets, the Mulford Act weakened the BPP and provided opportunities to show them breaking the law.

• In 1969, COINTELPRO (a branch of the FBI aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations) targeted the Panthers for elimination — shown in various documents.

• FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, who deemed the Black Panther Party a threat to American security, launched a counterintelligence attack against the group, which included infiltrators and deadly raids. By the time the group was dismantled in the mid-1970s, 28 members were dead. 750 Panthers were imprisoned. Systematically, the local and federal authorities dismantled the organization.

• Read FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s statement from May 15, 1969 calling “to neutralize the BPP and destroy what it stands for.’

Today, American children learn a false and warped history of The Black Panther Party. Teachers’ Curriculum Institute’s textbook History Alive! The United States Through Modern Times states: “Black Power groups formed that embraced militant strategies and the use of violence. Organizations such as the Black Panthers rejected all things white and talked of building a separate black nation.” Holt McDougal’s textbook The Americans reads: “Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded a political party known as the Black Panthers to fight police brutality in the ghetto.” This same textbook then says, “Public support for the Civil Rights Movement declined because some whites were frightened by the urban riots and the Black Panthers.”

While there is so much more to unpack about The Black Panther Party and the legacies of some of its most prominent members, I hope this newsletter clarified a lot of omitted history. In a time when critical race theory is under attack, it becomes crystal clear how much has been warped by the media — from news channels to text books — and how much more we need the truth.

See ya next week!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

The 4th of July

“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. ”

— Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 35 of this newsletter! Today we are talking about The 4th of July. We’ve learned from elementary school through adulthood that this is a holiday meant to celebrate liberty and freedom, but who did the Founding Fathers seek to celebrate when they signed the Declaration of Independence? Whose freedom was secured when 41 out of the 56 men who signed that document owned slaves? Let’s get into it.

Let’s Get Into It

The 4th of July commemorates the passage of the Declaration of Independence by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776.

• From 1776 to the present day, July 4th has been celebrated as the “birth of American independence”.

• Important Dates to Remember:

  • The end of slavery: January 31, 1865 (The 13th Amendment)

  • The right to vote for women: August 26, 1920 (The 19th Amendment)

  • The right to vote for non-white Americans: May 26, 1965 (Voting Rights Act of 1965)

  • The end of Jim Crow South: 1960s

  • The legalization of same-sex marriage: June 26, 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges)

• In 1776, who’s independence was being celebrated?

  • Not enslaved Americans (86 years until the end of slavery).

  • Not women (144 years until women will have the right to vote).

  • Not people of color (189 years until the Voting Rights Act).

  • Not Black Americans (about 189 years until the end of Jim Crow Laws).

  • Not gay or queer Americans (239 years until same sex marriage).

  • And still today we wait for so much more equality for the majority of Americans — POC, Indigenous, Black, Queer, Trans* Americans and so many others.

• In 1852 (13 years before the end of slavery), Fredrick Douglas delivered one of his most famous speeches, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Watch his descendants recite some of his most poignant lines.

As you barbecue and ignite fireworks this 4th of July, remember that many still wait for the promise of liberty and justice. That freedom has yet to be granted to all.

Internalized Colonialism & Lateral Oppression

“With lateral violence, the oppressed become the oppressors. We’ve internalised the pain of colonisation and our oppression and we’ve taken it into our communities.”

— Allen Benson, CEO Native Counselling Services Of Alberta, Canada

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 25 of this newsletter! Today’s topic is Internalized Colonialism & Lateral Oppression. I know, it’s a mouthful. After doing more research, I felt like I had to include both terms in the title. I think you’ll understand why. Lateral oppression, or lateral violence, is displaced violence directed against one’s peers rather than adversaries. This construct is one way of explaining violence between marginalized groups. It is a cycle of abuse and its roots lie in factors such as: colonisation, oppression, intergenerational trauma and the ongoing experiences of racism and discrimination. Internalized colonialism, or internalized oppression, is a concept in which an oppressed group uses the methods of the oppressor against itself. It occurs when one group perceives an inequality of value relative to another group, and desires to be like the more highly-valued group. Ultimately, these are a lot of terms that mean similar things—we’re talking about the concept of marginalized folks being oppressed and, in turn, oppressing those around them, and themselves.

A Note: After this week’s tragedy, where Asian-American women were targeted and murdered by a white man in Georgia, I would be remiss if I didn’t also take today’s newsletter as an opportunity to spread awareness and resources on the anti-Asian violence that has been more prominent than ever during the pandemic. I’ll be closing with those thoughts, but also encourage you to read my past newsletter on Anti-Asian Violence During COVID.

Let’s get into it.

Key Terms

Internalized Racism/ Internalized Oppression/ Internalized Colonialism: Internalized racism can be defined as the tendency of some individuals belonging to historically oppressed ethnic groups to regularly invalidate, demean, and/or suppress their own and other marginalized groups’ heritage, identity, self-worth, and human rights. Often, those with degrees of internalized racism are consciously or unconsciously socialized into believing that being a member of their own cultural group is somehow “lesser,” “inferior,” “shameful,” “undesirable,” or “unacceptable” in relation to the “mainstream” dominant culture. They regard themselves and/or members of their own cultural group with embarrassment (self-rejection) and disdain (self-loathing).

Lateral Violence/ Lateral Oppression: Displaced violence directed against one’s peers rather than oppressors. This construct is one way of explaining violence between marginalized groups. It is a cycle of abuse and its roots lie in factors such as: colonisation, oppression, intergenerational trauma and the ongoing experiences of racism and discrimination. It can also be described as, organized, harmful behaviors that we do to each other collectively as part of an oppressed group, within our families, within our organizations and within our communities.

Horizontal Aggression: The results of people of targeted racial groups (Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native) believing, acting on or enforcing the dominant (White) system of racist discrimination and oppression. Horizontal aggression can occur between members of the same racial group or between members of different, targeted racial groups.

“Black-On-Black Crime”: When a white person commits a crime against another white person, it’s just called a crime; race isn’t a factor, and that’s intentional. Using language like “Black-on-Black crime” perpetuates the myth that intraracial violence is specific to the Black community — a myth that implies Black people are inherently more violent. This tactic has been used to justify the mistreatment of Black people since the abolishment of slavery. This term originated during the race riots in the USA in the late 1960s. The earliest record I can find of it in print is this piece from The Chicago Daily Defender, March 1968: "The violence of black man stabbing black man, mugging black man stomping black man, raping black woman. Black on black. And a black crime against a black gets cancelled out in the mind of a white precinct commander."

Intergenerational Trauma: Multiple generations of families can transmit the damage of trauma throughout the years. Where trauma has been untreated, what is fairly common is that the untreated trauma in the parent is transmitted through the child through the attachment bond and through the messaging about self and the world, safety, and danger. Less visibly, intergenerational trauma also plays out in neglect and in the internal resources children gain or don’t gain as a result of their parents.

Let’s Get Into It

What Is It?

Now, what lateral oppression is not is “Black-On-Black Crime.” Not only because it’s a politicized term that’s misleading and gross, but because it’s more nuanced than that, which is why we’re talking about lateral oppression and internalized colonialism at the same time. Racism and discrimination cause internalized colonialism, which results in lateral oppression between marginalized folks in shared communities.

“One of the consequences of oppression and historical trauma is lateral violence. Lateral violence happens when people who are victims of dominance, turn on each other rather than confront the system oppressing them. Lateral violence occurs when oppressed groups or individuals internalize feelings, such as anger and rage, and manifest them through other behaviors, such as gossip, jealousy, putdowns, and blame. Adult bullying behavior can also be a manifestation of lateral violence. In addition to raising awareness about youth bullying, communities may also want to raise awareness about lateral violence, its relationship to historical trauma, and steps people can take to counteract it.” (SAMHSA)

Let’s Break It Down

• Who Is Effected:

  • Lateral violence is especially prevalent in the Native American communities in the United States, and Aboriginal and Indigenous communities in Canada and Australia. “Lateral violence has impacted indigenous peoples throughout the world to the point of where we harm each other in our communities and workplaces on a daily basis.” (Rod Jeffries)

  • Other communities experience lateral oppression as well. Though there is minimal research on this topic outside of Indigenous communities, there are various opinion pieces and lived experiences that demonstrate lateral violence is prevalent amongst many groups.

• How Common Is It:

  • In Australia, surveys have reported that up to 95% of Aboriginal youth had witnessed lateral violence in the home, and that 95% of the bullying experienced by Aboriginals was perpetrated by other Aboriginals.

• Why Does It Happen:

  • In Canada, lateral violence in the workplace is seen as a crisis. With one source stating: “Lateral violence is a learned behaviour as a result of colonialism and patriarchal methods of governing and developing a society. For Aboriginal people, this has meant that due to residential schools, discrimination and racism; Aboriginal people were forced to stop practicing their traditional teachings of oneness. As a result of this trauma, some Aboriginal people have developed social skills and work practices which do not necessary create healthy workplaces or communities. Since many Aboriginal people work in environments which may be predominantly Aboriginal, these practices mean that Aboriginal people are now causing pain and suffering on their own people.” (NWAC)

  • These behaviors are passed down through generations, like most intergenerational trauma. They are learned from the oppressor initially but are also learned from family and friends and the community as they become a part of the social norms—like racism or discrimination.

• What Does It Look Like:

  • Lateral oppression can look like bullying, harassment, misogyny, gossip, finger pointing, domestic violence or abuse. There are many individual motivating factors, but consistently it is enacted by someone who has been oppressed themselves.

  • In 1970, when a Black man was asked why he “robbed and beat up [other] black people,” he explained that he “commits crimes against other African Americans because that’s who lives around him—and that’s what police will let him get away with”. This also adds another layer to the conversation about communities of color often being removed from white communities and how that might impact the enactment of lateral violence.

Final Thoughts

Initially when I saw the term “Lateral Oppression,” which led me to want to know more, it was used in a context to describe homophobia in the Black community. Based on my research, the term has not historically been used in that context—to talk about homophobia in the Black community or sexism in the AAPI community or colorism in the Latinx community—but it definitely seems applicable. If lateral oppression’s definition is “displaced violence directed against one’s peers rather than oppressors,” than it makes sense to use it in that context, and perhaps, like all language, it will continue to evolve until it is used that way more commonly. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

A Note On Anti-Asian Violence

Asian Americans reported more than 2,800 first-hand accounts of hate crimes between late March and December 2020, everything ranging from being coughed and spat on to having “kung flu” shouted at them in grocery stores. Most recently, 8 people lost their lives when a white man attacked Asian-owned businesses in Georgia. 6 of them were Asian.

White supremacy has long created divides between marginalized communities, but we know liberation is only possible when we all work together. It’s imperative that all people of color stand in solidarity with the AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) community right now, just as it has always been crucial that all people of color support the Black community—something that was widely discussed during the Black Lives Matter protests. Ultimately, the pandemic has exposed the cracks in America’s society, bringing forth the layers of systemic racism and legacies of injustice that many Americans have chosen not to pay attention to until now. And it’s not only up to Black and AAPI communities to do the work of building solidarity — it’s the responsibility of all Americans to understand the role that white supremacy has played in creating these rifts that are exploited again and again. Learn more about the history of tensions and solidarity between the Black and AAPI communities here, and remember that it’s not the responsibility of the oppressed to teach and forgive the oppressor, it is the responsibility of all those who benefit from white supremacy to dismantle it. Though solidarity amongst BIPOC folks is necessary, allyship from white folks is essential.

Next week, it’s another personal newsletter drop coming at your inbox! I love to share more personal insights every now and then and hope you guys like to read them! I’ll see ya there!

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for, we are the change we seek” — With love and light, Taylor Rae

Scientific Racism

“Common sense itself is scarcely needed to detect the absence of manhood in a monkey, or to recognize its presence in a Negro. . . .Tried by all the usual, and all the unusual tests, whether mental, moral, physical, or psychological, the Negro is a MAN...Fashion is not confined to dress; but extends to philosophy as well—and it is fashionable now, in our land, to exaggerate the differences between the Negro and the European.”

— Frederick Douglass

Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 15 of this newsletter! This week’s topic is Scientific Racism. Scientific racism is the pseudoscientific belief that evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Most of these claims about Black people were made to justify slavery, segregation and the torture that they endured at the hands of doctors and scientists. From forced sterilization to experimentation to the current day stereotypes that pervade American culture, these false scientific claims have real world repercussions. In this newsletter, we are going to dive into a few key terms, talk through a brief history of scientific racism in America, summarize some of the outrageous claims that this fake science championed and discuss how the ghosts of these lies still haunt Black people today. Let’s get into it!

Key Terms

Pseudoscience: Pseudoscience consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual but are incompatible with the scientific method and often characterized by contradictory, exaggerated or unfalsifiable claims.

Physiognomy:The practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face.

Eugenics: The practice or advocacy of improving the human species by selectively mating people with specific desirable hereditary traits. It aims to reduce human suffering by “breeding out” disease, disabilities and so-called undesirable characteristics from the human population.

Ethnic Cleansing: The attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcible displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups.

Genocide: An internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The word “genocide” was coined by a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin who sought to describe Nazi policies of systematic murder during the Holocaust. He formed the word genocide by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing.

Polygenism: A theory of human origins which posits the view that the human races are of different origins. This view is opposite to the idea of monogenism, which posits a single origin of humanity.

Let’s Get Into It

A Brief History

• Beginning around the end of the 1790’s, as Enlightenment rationalism replaced faith and superstition as the source of authority and science became the preferred method for reconciling the difference between principle and practice.

• During chattel-slavery (1776-1865) scientific racism was used to defend the use of Black humans for hard labor. We’ll talk about that in more detail below.

• In 1917, American health officials in El Paso, Texas, launched a campaign to use toxic chemicals, including gasoline baths, to disinfect immigrants seeking to enter the United States through the US-Mexico border. This was because Mexicans were seen as dirty and disease ridden and in the wake of eugenics research, immigration officials sought to keep these people out. This campaign lasted well into the 1960s from the forced kerosene baths to the use of the poisonous gas Zyklon B to the fumigations of migrant workers. These “gasoline baths” later inspired Nazi scientist.

• Eugenics took hold in America in the late 19th century, and led to strict immigration policy, foreced sterilizations for those with physical and mental disabilities and even a supreme court ruling in favor of these steralizations until 1942. In the 1930s Puerto Rican women were sterilized without their consent by the thousands. According to a 1976 Government Accountability Office investigation, between 25 and 50 percent of Native Americans were sterilized between 1970 and 1976.

• In the early 20th century, Scientists claimed interracial marriages could cause genetic “disharmony”, one example was that of someone from a tall race marrying someone from a short race and their offspring inheriting the genes for large internal organs from one parent and for small stature from the other causing sickness. Interracial marriage was illegal in America until 1967’s Loving Vs. Virginia.

We know that racists have cited many works supported by scientific racism to justify segregation in the community, separate schooling, incarceration and the overall oppression of marginalized groups. This is the most summarized history of scientific racism I could piece together, but as always, if something piques your interest, I hope you continue learning!

Claims Made Using Scientific Racism

• Slaves are more accustomed to warm weather and toiling in the sun, being from African, and they can withstand the sunlight better because they have an eye feature like those found in apes. Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright (1815). (CHSTM + Washington Post)

• Drapetomania is a sickness that causes slaves to runaway and is only curable with physical punishment. Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright (1815). (Washington Post)

• Slaves have no imagination or taste, are lustful but do not know how to love, and can tolerate more pain than other races. Ultimately either the Black or white race would have to be extinct for the other to survive. Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson in “Notes on the State of Virginia”.

• Black people are impervious to pain and have weak lungs that can be strengthened through hard work and intense labor. (NY Times)

• British doctor, Benjamin Moseley, claimed that Black people could bear surgical operations much more than white people, noting that “what would be the cause of insupportable pain to a white man, a Negro would almost disregard.” To drive home his point, he added, “I have amputated the legs of many Negroes who have held the upper part of the limb themselves.” (NY Times)

• In his autobiography, “The Story of My Life,” the physician J. Marion Sims— long celebrated as the father of modern gynecology—also claimed Black people could withstand more pain. He described the agony Black women suffered as he cut their genitals again and again in an attempt to perfect a surgical technique to repair vesico-vaginal fistula, which can be an extreme complication of childbirth. (NY Times)

How This Impacts Black Americans Today

• Cartwright (yeah, the same doctor that diagnosed Drapetomania) wanted to validate his theory about lung inferiority in Black people, so he measured pulmonary function with an instrument called a spirometer, that he designed. He calculated that “the deficiency in the Negro may be safely estimated at 20 percent.” Today most spirometers, used around the world to diagnose and monitor respiratory illness, have a “race correction” built into the software, which controls for the assumption that Black people have less lung capacity than whites. (Breathing Race Into the Machine)

• Present-day doctors fail to sufficiently treat the pain of Black adults and children for many medical issues due to the remanence of slavery claiming Black people were stronger, tougher, had thicker skin and felt less pain. (AMA Journal)

• A 2016 survey of 222 white medical students and residents showed that half of them endorsed at least one myth about physiological differences between Black people and white people, including that Black people’s nerve endings are less sensitive than white people’s. When asked to imagine how much pain white or Black patients experienced in hypothetical situations, the medical students and residents insisted that Black people felt less pain. (PNAS)

• Stereotypes that pervade pop culture like Black people being pomiscusous, having larger genitals, being better athletes or stronger or less intelligent are all myths that remain from the studies of scientific racism.

Due to scientific racism, we are left with stereotypes that are so ingrained in American culture that even some of our best doctors and lawmakers believe them to be fact. From disparities in healthcare to mistreatment in the education system to the simple everyday practice of crossing the street when you see a Black person because something tells you they’re more likely to be a criminal—the lies of scientific racism pervades our current culture.

I highly encourage you to take a look at some resources Alok recently shared about physiognomy and eugenics and how those pseudosciences have and continue to oppress marginalized groups, with them specifically relating it to the queer and trans experience.

On Friday, we’ll be talking about Prison Reform. This is such an important topic to discuss because not only are Black and brown bodies disproportionately filling America’s prisons, but they are more likely to be arrested, victims of excessive force, and murdered by police. I’ll be sharing some of my favorite organizations at the front-lines of this work and ways to make an impact. See you there!