5SR - September 18, 2023

Dr. Kate is a professor at the University of New Hampshire and the National Director of Post-Secondary Pathways at BUILD.org. She researches critical race theory, white identity formation, critical whiteness studies, and institutional white supremacy. She is currently running for school board in her hometown of Amesbury, MA, and you can follow along / volunteer / donate at here! She’s the parent of two cute redheaded kids, she thinks fart jokes are hysterical, and she obsessively watches rug cleaning videos on TikTok.

You Should Visit South Carolina’s New International African American Museum Before It’s Illegal (The Grio)

Michael Harriot highlights the June dedication ceremony of the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina. In this op-ed, Harriot reminisces about his grandmother, a Geechee woman and descendant of enslaved people who lived in South Carolina, and ties her advice to the distinct anti-truth-telling rhetoric that are resulting from today’s CRT bans and divisive concepts legislation.

Moreover, Harriot elicits the question of what happens to our national museums and monuments in the age of ‘anti-truth’ or ‘alternative facts’. How do we honor memory and preserve the integrity of our history?

Harriot points out:

Mistakes Will Be Made (Ask Polly)

Approximately once a month, Heather Havrilesky’s life advice brings me to my damn knees.

And, I’ve spent upwards of a bazillion dollars in therapy co-pays to try and undo my hard-wiring that demands absolute perfection from me, always and forever. So when I read this piece of advice, it was both a perennial reminder (my therapist Carolyn would roll her eyes right now) and also had the newness of a brick dropped on my head:

Deconstructing the ‘Karen’ Meme (Harvard Law Today)

I co-facilitate a training with Dr. Angel Jones that is quite literally called “From Karen to Co-Conspirator” (you can click the link in my bio to be added to the waitlist!), and in this training, we unpack a ‘Karen’ and the antagonistic role that she occupies in pop culture and society - she is anathema to racial progress and justice, a caricature of white outrage.

Moreover, she is someone who weaponizes her whiteness to cause harm. Here, Dr. Apryl Williams deconstructs the Karen meme and points to the very real danger that Karens present to marginalized people.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge on Her “Surreal” Journey From Fleabag to Indiana Jones (Vanity Fair)

Like an adoring fangirl lemming, I would follow Phoebe Waller-Bridge off a cliff if she demanded it (and subsequently threw me a cute, crooked smile).

My best friend forced me to watch Waller-Bridge’s show Crashing last year, and I’ve been low-key obsessed with this immense talent ever since. This lovely, layered profile caught me grinning from ear-to-ear.

How the Right Retired 'Negrophile'—and Substituted 'Woke' (Mother Jones)

I’m begging y’all: please read everything Anthony Conwright publishes. His articles are unbelievably comprehensive, researched, and grounded in significant historical context.

In this incredibly in-depth piece, Anthony writes about the conflation of ‘wokeness’- a decidedly murky term that has been weaponized by conservative media- with a more specific historical term - negrophilia.

As Conwright points out, “Conservatives’ fanaticism around “wokeness”... has no anchor in logic, no real definition, and must also be fabricated ad nauseam” - and this fanatic fabrication has stark historical similarities to the Civil War-era crusade against negrophilia, or advocacy for Black equality and civil rights.

Conwright further explicates “As long as the presence of Blackness sparks white phobia, there is no appropriate way for Black people to have legible and viable socio-political demands. In American political discourse, all race-consciousness becomes an antagonistic force, a pathology—the contagion once called “negrophilia,” now called “wokeness.”

This article is an absolute doozy, and I must gently demand that you read it in its entirety to fully understand the toothlessness of the conservative arguments about the dangers of ‘wokene