Deconstructing White Supremacy (in a workshop and real life)

Deconstructing White Supremacy (in a workshop and real life)

By Anna Miller, a staff writer at RightsViews and a graduate student in ISHR's Human Rights MA Program. Note: This blog post addresses white supremacy in the United States only, though the ideology is alive globally.  On October 27, Dean Melanie Pagán and Dean Samantha Shapses, both of the School of International and Public Affairs, hosted a Deconstructing White Supremacy Workshop via Zoom. The workshop was open to the Columbia University community and fulfilled the Community Citizenship Requirement for Inclusion and Belonging for new Columbia students. To kick off the workshop, the group screened Understanding White Supremacy (And How to Defeat It). This video explained how the roots of white supremacy are linked to colonization and racial biology. White colonizers assumed that people of color were inferior because they were “so easily conquered” and then presumed that “white skin people were perhaps more evolved than dark skin people.” While these ideas are objectively nonsensical, they did help form modern-day white supremacy and as...
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Does Addressing Climate Change Mean Addressing Racism?

Does Addressing Climate Change Mean Addressing Racism?

By Noah Smith, RightsViews staff writer and graduate student in the Human Rights Studies program at Columbia University On October 28, Climate Refugees and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University brought together experts in environmental racism, indigenous rights, climate science and racial justice to discuss the two fundamental issues of our time: race and climate change. The panelists offered their expert opinions on the intersectional relationship between race and climate change and discussed solutions to mitigate these issues moving forward. The climate crisis has disproportionately impacted marginalized populations, many of whom may be displaced or forced to migrate, because of years of unequal access to opportunities and gaps in human rights. Panelist Dr. Ingrid Waldron, a noted sociologist, has coined this disproportionate impact as ‘Environmental Racism’ which she defined as ‘‘a disproportionate location and exposure for indigenous, racialized communities and poor white communities to contamination from polluting industries and other environmentally hazardous activities.’’ The panel further articulated the...
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Truth in Sentencing: Mass Incarceration in the United States

Truth in Sentencing: Mass Incarceration in the United States

By Reem Katrib, Staff Writer for RightsViews  With the mark of the 10th year anniversary of Michelle Alexander’s powerful book The New Jim Crow at the end of January, our current celebration of  Black History Month, and an approaching presidential election, it is important to bring to the forefront the continuing systemic racism in the American criminal justice system. The recent eighth presidential debate, argued the evening of February 7, 2020, in New Hampshire, brought forth this topic with the spotlight on presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg when asked why a black resident in South Bend, Indiana was four times more likely to be arrested for the possession of marijuana than a white resident after his appointment to office. While Buttigieg had initially avoided the questions posed by ABC News’ Live News Anchor Linsey Davis, he then conceded, claiming that the arrests made were made as a result of the gang violence that was prevalent in the black community of South Bend,...
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