Professor Megan Ming Francis has been busy. Not only being quoted in The Seattle Times and writing an entry for the Washington Post's Monkey Cage blog, a TED Talk but also curating a resource page on Pocket.
Pocket: Reimagining Justice: A Primer on Defunding the Police and Prison Abolition
TED Talk
"Why does the killing of unarmed blacks continue to happen?" asks political scientist Megan Ming Francis. She makes an urgent case for a new approach to these tragic deaths, explaining that we need to look at the deeper causes of systemic racism rather than settle for easy fixes.
"A better understanding of the root causes of the current place where we are will help provide us the tools that we need to move us forward."
The Washington Post Monkey Cage Blog
"The white press has a history of endangering black lives going back a century"
In 1919 Arkansas a group of African American sharecroppers attempted to organize for better conditions. In the confrontation that followed one white man was killed. "Next came the worst racial violence until then in the 20th century: 237 African American men, women, and children were hunted, shot and killed over three days, with many more wounded. Thousands fled to the woods for shelter as their homes and businesses were looted and set on fire."
What followed was a cover-up of the truth, with the press being fed fabricated details and prominent publications like the New York Times having a headline that read “Planned Massacre of Whites Today” and the Los Angeles Times declared on its front page “Whites Battle with Negro Gangs.”
"The Black Lives Matter protests have been shaking up not just conversations about policing, but also almost every industry — including journalism. As Washington Post media reporters Paul Farhi and Sarah Ellison wrote this weekend, 'Like the nation itself, news organizations across the country are facing a racial reckoning, spurred by protests from their own journalists.'"
The Seattle Times
Prof. Francis is quoted in a piece by columnist Naomi Ishisaka, "How a history of racism, police brutality and a pandemic led to an ‘extraordinary moment’"
"Long before cellphone videos captured police brutality for all to see, Francis said Black lives have been under threat.
'There’s never been a time in American history that Black lives have been safe from state violence and white vigilante violence. I cannot point you to a decade time span. It just does not exist.'
Over time, institutionalized racism created conditions that led to the overpolicing of Black communities, the mass incarceration of Black and Latino people and deep wealth inequality."