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(Correction: An earlier version misstated the pollution contribution from individual industries to East Phillips’ overall pollution problems. It has been corrected. This post also was updated with information from the MPCA.)
The City of Minneapolis has declared racism a public health emergency, pledging to “allocate funding, staff, and additional resources to actively engage in racial equity in order to name, reverse, and repair the harm done to BIPOC in this City.”
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has committed to environmental justice, saying it will focus “on developing strategies to reduce pollution and health disparities in communities most at-risk.”
Unfortunately, neither of those promises are protecting the residents of East Phillips, one of Minneapolis’ poorest and most racially diverse neighborhoods, and home to Little Earth, a 212-unit housing development that gives preference to Native American applicants.
The neighborhood has several pollution sources: Smith Foundry, an iron works; Bituminous Roadways, an asphalt plant; the city’s Hiawatha Public Works yard, and Hiawatha Avenue, a major thoroughfare.
City leaders should know that East Phillips is part of the “pubic health emergency.” The city’s 2021 Racial Equity Impact Analysis said residents living in the area “experience much higher levels of cumulative pollution than residents from majority white city neighborhoods … leading to [higher] levels of asthma and hospitalization for children and adults.”
(East Phillips asthma levels were more than double the state average in 2019, MinnPost reported.)
Unless things change soon, East Phillips will soon get even more pollution and related health problems, further exacerbating health disparities.
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Russia troops have absconded with thousands of Ukrainian children who were separated from their families during the war, the Washington Post reports. While the numbers aren’t clear, Ukraine’s top children’s rights official said family and friends have reported more than 10,000 unaccompanied Ukrainian children have been sent to Russia.
For example, Oleksandr, a 12-year-old boy injured in a Russian attack in Mariupol, was separated from his grandmother while seeking medical help, the Post story said. Troops took him to a hospital in Donetsk, in Russian-occupied Ukraine, where he was told Russian parents would adopt him.
Lyudmila, the grandmother, somehow was able to save him before he left for Russia. She shared her grandson’s experience: They “told him that Ukraine is bad and Ukrainians are evil,” she said. “They forced the children to speak Russian.”
I couldn’t read this story without thinking about the legacy of Indian boarding schools and other U.S. assimilation policies.
We rightfully condemn Russia’s actions, which are war crimes. At the same time, we need to take a hard look at our own history, and our failure to repair the deep harm U.S. actions have inflicted on Indigenous children, families, and communities.
We can’t condemn the one, and ignore the other.
Continue reading(See also Part I: The Religion of Whiteness: What survey data says about White Christians’ attitudes about race and privilege, Part II: Religion of Whiteness: What is it? and Part III: Stories and reflections from Christians of Color.)
New research data shows that White Christians are twice as likely as other groups to agree that it’s acceptable for White people to have more wealth than other people. And 70 percent agree with the statement: “racial minorities use racism as an excuse for economic inequalities.”
Jim Bear Jacobs, the Minnesota Council of Church’s (MCC’s) Co-Director for Racial Justice, said one of the research’s stunning revelations was that these opinions were uniformly held between Conservative Christians, Mainline Protestants, and Catholics.
“That was an eye opener,” he said.
Jacobs has wavered between hope and despair about the church’s ability to move to a racially justice future, he said. Based on the research, he didn’t think White leadership could get us there anymore. “Racism and White Supremacy is so entrenched in Christian thought.”
“Maybe for the White church, it’s time that we stop sitting hospice and attend the funeral,” he said, citing Soong-Chan Rah. “Rather than trying to do all the work to reform, do we let it die and believe in resurrection?”
Continue reading(See also Part I: The Religion of Whiteness: What survey data says about White Christians’ attitudes about race and privilege, and Part II: Religion of Whiteness: What is it?)
Rev. Dr. Kelly Sherman-Conroy, a member of the Oglala Sioux Nation, ordained ELCA pastor, and a Native theologian, speaks at various churches and events about Lakota traditions and values, and the important role culture plays within the Christian church experience.
It can be emotionally draining for her.
She recalled that after speaking at a congregation last spring, a man approached her and said: “So let me get this right. What I hear from you is that you believe Indigenous people are the superior race. …”
Sherman-Conroy had her nine-year-old son with her. She tried to figure out how to respond, as the man continued to pontificate.
She didn’t finish that story. She did say when she goes somewhere to speak or preach now, she asks the congregation to have someone with her “so they can hear the crap that I go through.”
Continue reading(See also Part I: The Religion of Whiteness: What survey data says about White Christians’ attitudes about race and privilege.)
An entire religion has developed in the United States around “the worship of Whiteness,” says Prof. Dr. Michael O. Emerson.
The Religion of Whiteness “believes that White people and White ways are superior, theologically, morally, legally, economically, [and] culturally,” Emerson said.
Continue readingWhat survey data says about White Christians’ attitudes about race and privilege
White Christians are twice as likely as other groups to agree that it’s acceptable for White people to have more wealth than other people.
Seventy percent of While Christians agree with the statement: “racial minorities use racism as an excuse for economic inequalities.” (The majority of those who aren’t White Christians disagree.)
White Christians are twice as likely as other White people to say they often feel the need to defend their racial group. They also are twice as likely as other White people to say being White is extremely important to how they think about themselves
These are among the findings Prof. Dr. Michael O. Emerson presented at the “White Church Truths” event sponsored by the Minnesota Council of Churches (MCC) Nov. 5 at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Minneapolis.
Why are White Christians different from even other White people?, Emerson asked. “We think there is a different religion operating, the Religion of Whiteness,” he said. “It disguises itself as being Christian. … It’s not.”
Continue readingHarvard University’s Peabody Museum has one of the largest collections of Native American remains in the United States and is moving forward with efforts to repatriate them, along with 15 remains of “enslaved or likely to have been enslaved individuals.”
“We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity,” said Harvard President Lawrence Bacow.
Harvard’s “Steering Committee on Human Remains in University Museum Collections” issued its report this fall, explaining how it plans to move forward.
Harvard alumni and students wrote Bacow criticizing the report for what they said was its glaring failure “to recognize the unique opportunity to seek reconciliation with its Indigenous community.”
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