Tag: the new jim crow
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Getting to Know my White Privileged Self
A new essay is rising up within me. This is what it feels like when I know I have something to write about but don’t know exactly where this “feeling of an idea” is leading. It’s an exciting journey of discovery—exciting because I know I will learn and grow a lot in the process. But…
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Dismantling my Privilege begins with Understanding
In his essay “The Harlem Ghetto” James Baldwin describes the 1950 American reality as a “bitterness—felt alike by the inarticulate, hungry population of Harlem, by the wealthy on Sugar Hill, and by the brilliant exceptions ensconced in universities—which has defeated and promises to continue to defeat all efforts at interracial understanding.”[1] Baldwin could just as…
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In Need of Jubilee: Reflecting on Mass Incarceration
By 7:30am, my six students and I were on our first of two buses that would take us across town to the southeast neighborhood of Washington, D.C. We were proud of ourselves for catching the right buses and making the hour and fifteen minute commute successfully. No small feat for anyone trying to get to…
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Protecting our Hopefulness
I just returned from a trip to Washington DC where six students and I studied the issue of mass incarceration. I will write more about this trip soon, but for now I just want to highlight the inspiring work of Bryan Stevenson. Stevenson is a lawyer who founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice…
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A Reason to Live, Even in February
It’s hard to love life in February. All I see on my drive to work is the grey sky mixing into the grey snow that melds with the grey cement of the cracked and salt-stained road beneath my wheels. Black branches poke and scratch the sunless sky as I begin to look for color—any sign…
Teri McDowell Ott 