A mid-air collision over the Potomac. Raging wildfires in Los Angeles. The catastrophic collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. At first glance, these events seem completely disconnected from each other. However, they do share one underlying theme: they were all swiftly blamed on DEI. In a world where accountability often takes a back seat […]
Tag: racism
Portugal Elections Mark Europe’s Surge Toward Radical Right
In April, Portugal was supposed to celebrate its 50-year anniversary of democracy, leadership, and stability since the Carnation Revolution, which overthrew the right-wing dictatorship that had led the country for decades. However, in March, just one month before this great milestone in the country’s history, it is facing political turmoil and democratic decay. Populist right-wing […]
Biden ruined AAPI heritage month
Old Man Joe makes a mockery of Asian America. Seems like being the oldest President this country ever had, his views on Asian America are just as outdated as him. On May 31st, 2022 President Biden made a mockery of Asian America and displayed it to the entirety of the United States. Joe Biden invited […]
The Lacks Legacy: Reforming Racism in the Medical Field
On a cold day in January of 1951, Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman from Virginia, rushed to the Johns Hopkins Medical center after experiencing heavy vaginal bleeding and severe uterine pain. Dr. George Otto Gey, a white, male physician, examined her, diagnosed her with a severe case of cervical cancer and began treatment. Eight months […]
Standardized Testing Isn’t What’s Wrong with College Admissions
“Standardized testing is a form of eugenics,” declared a classmate in my legal studies class. We had been discussing the legacies of eugenics in the United States and how these harmful, pseudoscientific beliefs permeate our lives today. In response to the statement, other students began pointing to popular criticisms of standardized tests like the SAT […]
Where do Tacos Come from? // History of Things (Transcript)
This is a transcript of Bearly Political’s most recent podcast. Listen to the full episode here. Zachary: Like a lot of people during the pandemic, I took up a new hobby: hiking. At the time, I was living in Southern France, near these alpine foothills, and every week or so I’d trek across those Mediterranean mountaintops […]
Can the Invisible Hand Guide Us to Racial Justice?
Daunte Wright was just a year older than me. He was a father, a recent graduate, a basketball fan, and most of all, beloved by his friends and family. On April 11, Wright was fatally shot by white police officer Kimberly Potter during a traffic stop in which she claims she meant to taze him […]
What the Coronavirus Can Teach Us About Gun Violence
Only three years ago, mass shootings seemed to make national headlines nearly once a month. Gun control was at the center of the American political landscape as advocacy groups such as March for Our Lives (MFOL) emerged and sparked debates over gun control on the national level. However, as the coronavirus pandemic has consumed the […]
The Lasting Harms of Toxic Exposure in Native American Communities
“They never told us uranium was dangerous. We washed our faces in it. We drank in it. We ate in it. It was sweet,” explained Cecilia Joe, an 85-year-old Navajo woman, in a recent interview. Joe’s experience illustrates the under-researched but extremely pervasive problem of environmental injustice on Native American reservations. Due to decades of […]
Voting Behind Bars: Why Incarceration Should Not Limit the Right to Vote
On March 2, as congressmembers considered the For the People Act, a bill that would enact the most comprehensive expansion of voting sights in the United States since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Democratic representatives Cori Bush of Missouri and Mondaire Jones of New York introduced an unprecedented and groundbreaking amendment to the bill […]
Has the Left Gone too Far?: Addressing Racial Inequality in Primary Education
Launch yourself back into your first grade class and imagine this: Your teacher asks the class, “What’s four plus four?” Simple enough, you raise your hand and respond once called on, “Five!” Your teacher responds, “You’re close, but that’s the wrong answer.” Well, the Pathway for Equitable Math Instruction would agree you’re wrong, but not […]
Death to the Death Penalty: Capital Punishment as a Tool of White Supremacy
White America is slowly but surely coming to the realization that when government-created and funded systems fail minorities, the intended systems have not broken; rather, those systems are working exactly as intended. They directly reflect their creation on the backs of slaves as our nation was born. One of the most vile and haunting reminders […]
Ditching the Model Minority Myth
Since the 1960s, Asian Americans have been upheld as the ideal immigrant. As one 1986 CNN article put it, “they are smarter and better educated and making more money than everyone else.” At a time characterized by the Civil Rights Movement and contentious race relations between white and black Americans, the popularization of Asian American […]
For The Sake Of Our Asian Elders, Reject Anti-Blackness
Anti-Asian racism is surging, and it’s no secret as to why. Thanks to the bigoted lie that our community was responsible for bringing Covid-19 into America and the morally bankrupt leaders who doubled down on discrimination, hostility towards the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) peoples has run rampant. In the six months after the nationwide […]
The Anti-Blackness of Surveillance
This past summer was one of uproar and unrest, as hundreds of Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the country due to outrage over our nation’s senseless police shootings of unarmed Black men and women. As these protests proliferated, police departments tried to repress them, and reports that authorities were using alarming surveillance techniques to […]
Algorithmic Injustice
Algorithms in the justice system started off as a noble solution to a serious problem: the bias of judges. There are two distinct ways that judges can be biased — targeted bias, such as sexist and racist beliefs, and cognitive bias, ways in which our mental circuitry fails to work logically (such as how judges […]
BLM Protests Challenge France’s Colorblindness
Justice Pour Adama As Assa Traoré, a French anti-racism activist of Malian descent, followed the murder of George Floyd in late May 2020 and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the United States, she saw in it the opportunity to seek justice for her brother and awaken a colorblind France to the […]
Affirmative Action: Failed Promises & The Brighter Future
During the time of Dr. King, when America boldly established that its original promise would live up to the meaning of its creed, that equality under the law must be the privilege of all Americans, this country began on a path of reimagined possibility for the victims of its oppressive past. And in 1965, President […]
On California’s Law and Order Initiative: Proposition 20, Featuring Eric A. Stanley
“This bill is being pushed through at the same time that the people across the United States are demanding the abolition of the prison industrial complex. It’s indicative of a culture war, which is to say a class war, around prisons and policing.” – Eric A. Stanley Walking on the streets of California after consuming […]
Between the Lines
What Underhandedly Racist Comments Sound Like and Why They Call for Self-Reflection Although slavery was abolished in 1865, its long-lasting impact is still felt in 2020. However, the difference between 1865 and 2020 is that racism is not as blatant. Racism has diverted away from textbook imagery and is now predominantly emulated through implicit biases […]
One Size Does Not Fit All: The Rise of Diverse Fashion Models
The 2019 New York Fashion Week runways were said to be the most diverse ones yet, with an estimated 48 percent of the featured models being from minority groups. This statistic is shocking, considering the history of the industry as a whole. For decades, the fashion industry has established the standards of beauty for society […]
There are Eyes Everywhere: The Dangers of Policing and Surveilling Black and Muslim Communities
As the technological revolution sweeps countries and cities all over the world, more and more daily activities are being mechanized. From iPhones being unlocked by faces, to online stores knowing exactly what you want when you want it, we are at a time of innovation. New high-tech security cameras and alarm systems are making homes, […]
How Reparations Can Address Educational Inequities for Black American Students
While the rhetoric of a post-racial society has diminished the urgent claims for reparations, a national conversation has resurfaced. Largely because of the Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “A Case for Reparations” and the push to pass H.R. 40 (a bill to create a committee to research the impact of reparations), reparations are being reintroduced as a method […]
New Jim Crow, Interrupted
Racism is alive and well in America. But on February 20th of this year, a piece of that insidious system was dealt a stinging blow. On that day, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Timbs v. Indiana that the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines applied to the states. The Court told states and […]
Amber Guyger: A Symptom of White Supremacy in American Policing
By now, almost everyone has heard the infuriating details of the murder of Botham Jean. As off-duty police officer Amber Guyger tells it, she mistakenly walked into Jean’s apartment and shot him dead, thinking him an intruder in her apartment. The idea that an African American man can be sitting idly in his own home, […]
Behind the Scenes of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’
Within its first 9 days of release, Crazy Rich Asians made $50 million dollars. Tickets sales were surging due to its diverse cast and plot. Critics, actors, movie buffs, and movie watchers all across the world were praising this movie for achieving not only success in the box office but also in representation. However, while […]
Creating A College Admissions Process Based On Disadvantage
Affirmative action policies have been adopted by universities across the country for at least four decades, in the hopes of ensuring a diverse campus by creating an equal playing field. The motivation behind these policies is admirable. As someone who was born in a country where over 98 percent of the population shares the same […]
Olympic Discrimination: Asian Americans and Media
Yellow Snow: Pyeongchang 2018 The color of sunshine on a warm day, the lemons in my backyard garden, the iridescent gleam of a gold Olympic medal, and also, the shade of my skin. As an Asian American myself, the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics marked a massive milestone for Asian American representation in the media, yet also […]
Racial Inequalities Permeate the Legal Marijuana Market
The date April 20th seems to be a holiday at the University of California, Berkeley and various other college campuses throughout the state. Walking through campus on this unofficial holiday will lead to encounters with dozens of food trucks and tables occupied by eager students trying to sell their snacks for those suffering from “munchies,” […]
Wanted: Young, White, and Angry
My friend was killed by a neo-nazi. It’s a strange thing to type out, but it’s true. Even stranger, though, are the details: killed by a former classmate of ours. He picked my friend up in his car, drove to a local park, and then stabbed him. This is a boy who was once my […]
Barred from the Ballot Box: Felon Disenfranchisement in America
Six million American adults are legally ineligible to vote, members of a group whose ranks have roughly quintupled over the past 40 years. In Kentucky and Tennessee, this group now comprises more than a fifth of the African American population; in Florida, this group composes more than 10 percent of the adult population. But these […]
Why Asian Americans Don’t Vote: A Theoretical Perspective
I recently watched the new Jackie Chan movie called, The Foreigner, which is basically a Chinese Taken (highly recommended, by the way). But what stood out to me was the title. The only reason this title is even pertinent to the movie is the character that Chan plays, an immigrant in the UK who fights […]
The United States… And Territories: America’s Paradise Lost
On October 13, one news headline stood out among the rest: “Trump says he spoke to U.S. Virgin Islands’ ‘president’ — which is him.” “Must’ve been a one-sided conversation,” one Twitter user noted. The Daily Show put out a video of Trump shaking hands with his “genetic replica.” This hilarity momentarily puts a spotlight on […]
Knock Knock, It’s Your Old Neighbor, White Supremacy
It’s hard to start an article that talks about Nazis. Nazis. In my short lifetime, I would hear “Nazi” in a history or government class. When I entered college, I heard it from freshmen in political science courses who decided that by asking the age-old question, “but what about the Nazis?” would show how smart […]
Lost in Transit: Sub-Saharan Migrants in Libya
Kalilu Drammeh, an 18-year-old Gambian Muslim, was not welcome in Libya. His skin color distinguished him from the Libyan population, as well as from the Arab and Berber refugees from elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. On his journey to the Mediterranean, smugglers singled him out for verbal and physical abuse. In Libya, […]
Racism Today versus Racism after 9/11
After the September 11 attacks in New York, the level of hate crimes against people who appeared Middle Eastern, Arab, or Muslim rose to extremely high levels. According to FBI data, there were 93 reports of anti-Muslim assaults in 2001, compared to 12 reports in 2000. While the number of reported hate crimes decreased over […]
Mauritania: A Place of Continuing Slavery
Moulkheir Mint Yarba tends goats in the Sahara Desert and works long hours in the sun for little to no pay. Yarba constantly fears the prospect of rape and on one day, upon returning home, she found that her master had left her young infant out in the sun to die. Following the death of […]
A Dance with the Devl(in): Insight to the Fracturing of the Berkeley College Republicans and How It’s Still Dangerous
Note: The views in this article are those of the author alone, and do not represent the views of any organization in any official capacity. Even to outsiders, it is hard to miss the drama surrounding the Berkeley College Republicans that has drawn national attention by inviting controversial speakers and giving rise to protests that […]
Blood for Trees: The Plight of Uncontacted Tribes in Brazil
Last month, around the Jandiatuba river in the Amazonas region of Western Brazil, a small cohort of illegal gold miners happened upon a group of indigenous people, members of one of many uncontacted tribes throughout Brazil. Reports state that these miners murdered between ten to twenty people, including women and children. This massacre would have […]
#OscarsSoWhite: The Call for Racial Diversity in Hollywood
Lack of racial diversity in Hollywood made headlines last year when the 2015 Academy Awards (AKA the Oscars) featured nominations for twenty white actors and zero minority actors in its acting categories. The outrage caught on social media fire with a blunt and catchy Twitter hashtag : #OscarsSoWhite. The #OscarsSoWhite people received backlash, too, mostly […]
“Leapfrogging”: Can developing countries truly skip over fossil fuel reliance in favor of renewable energies?
There is a popular argument that progress and growth are not possible without reliance on fossil fuel-powered energy. Examples abide to support this claim: almost every industrialized country is (relatively and subjectively) thriving today because of their rampant abuse of coal, oil, and gas. The 1.3 billion people without electricity access are largely concentrated in […]
A Coded Political Mantra
According to Malcolm X, “Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.” Since the outlaw of slavery, racial discrimination taken on many different forms, from physical abuse, to legal segregation, to dog whistle politics, with the last yet to be prohibited. Today, dog whistle politics, a type of political speech […]
Bringing Down the House
If the Greek fraternity system is molding the leaders of tomorrow, then tomorrow is going to look an awful lot like the past. Modern American society has been at war with backwards “isms”, including exclusivism, sexism, and racism. We fight these wrongs in the name of progress. We rightly champion the American values of merit, […]
Hipsters, Murals, and Putin’s New Youth Movement
It’s easy to see why Russia’s ultranationalist youth groups have earned comparisons to the Hitler Youth. Masterminded in 2005 by Kremlin ideologist and later Deputy Prime Minister Vladislav Surkov, Nashi (“Ours” in English) soon became the largest among the pro-Putin youth groups. In its heyday, it was some 100,000 members strong. Nashi members attended patriotic […]
Hypocrisy In the EPA: Environmental Discrimination in Louisiana
It has been decades since dioxin, a chemical contaminant, overtook the Mossville, Louisiana population. The deleterious toxin reigns supreme over its residents, conquering their lives one by one. Today, the African American community of Mossville is surrounded by fourteen industrial facilities within a half mile radius. These buildings have been spewing hazardous substances into […]
Racial Profiling and the Media
Recently, widespread attention has been devoted to instances of racial profiling, about the tragic lives of the victims of racial profiling, about how “wrong” racial profiling is, and about what we, as members of the community, should do to eliminate such activity. There’s just one problem, though. None of this incessant and often repetitive dialogue […]