Anti-Racism Reading February 2026

“using this voice, I want to affirm: Black women do indeed teach. We have always taught. And now more than ever, people must hearken to our voices. So here are 45 lessons I carry, learned from the Black women and femmes who raised me, stretched me, saved me, challenged me, and held me.”

“These distortions create a cascade of negative consequences. African governments face elevated borrowing costs. Investors shy away not because opportunities are lacking, but because the pricing signals suggest they should. Businesses are denied fair access to capital. A continent with the potential to drive green energy, manufacturing, technology, agriculture, and creative sectors remains trapped in a cycle of underinvestment. The issue is not the absence of capital. The issue is capital that is trapped—misunderstood, mispriced, and misallocated.”

“Our findings suggest that a shift in paradigm from designing for communities to designing with them should be prioritized, especially among companies working toward inclusive technologies. The insights from our study provide a clear roadmap for policymakers, developers, and civil society around the individualized and collective concerns of Black women. Centering their experiences and deploying the recommendations below might lead to more equitably designed and deployed AI models.”

“The critiques directed at Bellingham’s “temperament” reveal far more about the observers than the observed. His critics are not reacting to him, they are reacting to the discomfort of confronting a Black man who owes them nothing, who plays with a freedom they cannot control..”

“Hurricane Melissa once again showed us that the same islands and the same peoples that are … demanding reparative justice for the crimes against humanity of slavery, slave trade, and indigenous genocide, are the same peoples and the same countries that are on the wrong end of the effect of climate change. And so those two issues are inseparable.”

“this pattern is a combination of ableism, racial bias, and gendered stereotyping. White autistic women are treated as deserving of empathy and care, while Black autistic women are expected to endure. The consequences are profound: a Black autistic woman may struggle silently, her pain dismissed, while the support structures that could make her life easier remain out of reach.”

“Colonialism has returned, not by domination, but by design default. This time, no one is waving flags. We are just logging in. AI is doing what the East India Company once did, only faster. It becomes indispensable before anyone notices dependence. The empire is not British, American, or Chinese. It is corporate, borderless, and algorithmic. A company without a country. And the colonization is not of land, but of logic. Not through malice, but through infrastructure. Not through force, but through convenience.”

“In a sector often driven by outcomes and metrics, these unscripted exchanges remind us that meaningful engagement begins with presence. Listening without agenda is itself a curatorial act. This reminded me of cultural theorist bell Hooks whose philosophies taught that the first responsibility of love is to listen. In these moments, we aren’t just consulting communities; we’re co-imagining futures together.”

“The report also highlights how 99% of people in the New York Police Department’s gang database and 96% of those listed in Chicago’s are Latino or Black. Meanwhile, 98% of those who have been sentenced to prison with gang sentencing enhancements in Los Angeles County are nonwhite. In Mississippi, the Association of Gang Investigators reported that 53% of gang members in the state are white, but everyone arrested under the state’s gang law between 2010 and 2017 was Black. The federal government now operates on these same standards.”

“She was hovering so close to me while I checked out that she saw the price and quantity of what I rang up. She was in my personal space that much, y’all. And she just had to make sure I was “caught red-handed” for a 9-cent difference that she was actually wrong about.”