West Oakland is a hot new spot for techies looking for a cheap neighbourhood, but it’s also a hotbed of environmental racism.
West Oakland, gentrification, and environmental racism
Category: race
The secret history of Chinese-American Civil War soldiers
For my latest installment of Chinese-American history, I take a look at the Chinese soldiers who fought in the Civil War — on both sides.
The curious history of the Chinese-American cemetery
The lengthy and sometimes dark history of the Chinese in California includes the everpresent question of what we do with our dead.
‘That’s weird!’: Bad guys and cultural practices
The use of ‘weird’ cultural practices for antagonists in pop culture perpetuates stereotypes about the strange and alien nature of non-Western cultures.
Laying Some History On You: The Chinese laundry
The story behind the plethora of Chinese laundries in the United States is a dark one, and a reminder that social phenomena often have sinister origins.
You seriously want to complain about equity permits?
The City of Oakland is attempting to balance out some of the effects of the drug war by requiring equity permits for marijuana-related businesses, but not everyone is on board.
Let’s talk about Native lives and police violence
Discussions about police violence and race must include the Native community along with other aspects of intersectionality.
Fighting dual racisms: People of colour in the environmental movement
Racism plays out in many complicated ways for people of colour in the environmental movement — in addition to the structural inequalities that degrade the environment in their communities, the movement itself continues to struggle with racialised problems.
Talking intersections with race, disability, and police violence
The nation knows that the Black and Native American communities are at increased risk for police violence, but few are talking about the fact that roughly half of fatal police encounters also incorporate disability. It’s time for that to change.
Child actors of colour deserve better
I didn’t watch the 2016 Oscars, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that I feel increasingly disconnected from what the mainstream Hollywood establishment wants to celebrate and what I enjoy viewing. The event has been criticised heavily from a number of angles, but I’m especially fed up with seeing limited diversity […]