Almond Tree Branches on Blue Sky

AFTERWARD by Ofra Bloch

There was no way I could have known when I went to Germany to interview the descendants of perpetrators of the Holocaust for my film Afterward that this journey would take the form of a personal analysis. On the surface, I wanted to rid myself of my hatred for these Germans, who had done nothing wrong but whose ancestors tried to kill my people. I wanted to stop the cycle of hate
and othering before I passed it on to my own sons, to the next generation.

Man under the shadow in a black background with a white aura

READING RACISM DEEPLY by Daniel Rosengart

If the usual formula is that the negative affects hide in positive speech, overtly racist discourse flips the polarity, but the possibility that a racist discourse might hide a forbidden love, sexuality, or attachment is all too often ignored in clinical treatments that have been published.

nicole-baster-1174125-unsplash

WHITE LETHALITY/ WHITE LEGIBILITY by Michelle Fine

Two protestors stand side by side—one black, the other white. The black figure holds a sign that reads “I Can’t Breathe”; the white figure holds a sign that reads “I Can’t See.” I am the youngest daughter of Jack (an orphan) and Rose Fine, who was the youngest of eighteen children, both Jewish refugees from Poland.

"We are all immigrants", Lafayette Square. Photo by Lorie Shaull.

DUTY TO SPEAK by Betty Teng

The folks in the images appearing with this essay hold the traumas of racism, immigration, natural disaster and genocide. I show these faces because they reflect experiences of trauma so many of us Americans contain, directly or intergenerationally. I point to these images also to reflect on the ongoing fact that Donald Trump and his supporters’ aggressive words, policies and actions
against these already vulnerable people — against what is vulnerable in us all — has been traumatizing or re traumatizing for far too many.

Photo: Markus Schreiber, AP. © 2017 The Associated Press.

THE BRAND by Jeri Isaacson

The day in April that Ivanka Trump appeared on the dais with Angela Merkel at the Women’s Summit in Berlin, I was in my office. I was listening to a vibrant and astute young woman in her twenties as she confessed, a little sheepishly, that her new shirt had “trendy” sleeves…