Race/Ethnicity

COMMUNITY VOICES | Juneteenth Film Festival seeks submissions from minority filmmakers

By Juneteenth Film Initiative, Community Voices

We are the Juneteenth Film Initiative, a new Midwest organization whose prime goal is to celebrate and highlight diversity in film. On April 4 we launched our website, and along with it, an announcement that there's a new film festival in town. The JFI Festival will run in conjunction with the Minneapolis Juneteenth Festival, a yearly community mainstay that celebrates the emancipation act. We hope to give the Twin Cities a fresh new spin on film; one that celebrates freedom behind the lens. We will kick off our festival this June 13-16, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Sabaidee Pi Mai and our Lao community

By Sunny Chanthanouvong, Sunny's Side of Life

Sabaidee Pi Mai! Happy Lao New Year!

I want to personally invite everyone to come join us for the traditional Lao New Year this month on Saturday, April 13th at the Crystal Community Center in Crystal, Minnesota from 9 AM to Midnight. From 2-6 we will have the Nangsankanh and traditional dance and talent show, with live music and entertainment from 7 until midnight. The tickets are $15 but free for youth under 18. 

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Sunny's Side of Life

Minnesota for Marriage affiliate drags in Hitler references

By Staff, American Jewish World

Representatives from Shir Tikvah Congregation, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), Jewish Community Action (JCA), the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, Temple of Aaron, and Plymouth Congregational Church, among others, publicly condemned the use of Nazi references by Minnesotans for Marriage in its efforts to oppose same-sex marriage.

Last Friday, March 29, representatives from Shir Tikvah Congregation, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), Jewish Community Action (JCA), the Minneapolis Jewish Federation, Temple of Aaron, and Plymouth Congregational Church, among others, hosted a press conference to condemn the use of Nazi references in Minnesota for Marriage’s efforts to oppose same-sex marriage.

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Jewish Arts Lab, or why I'm a Jewish artist

By Shana Cohen, TC Jewfolk

At our recent Laboratory last Thursday, I asked the participants to write a six-word memoir on being a Jewish Artist. There was one that really stood out to me: “Artist everywhere, Jew not always present.”

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TC Jewfolk

OUR STORIES | Vangeline Ortega: "Brother, can you spare a kidney?"

By Vangeline Ortega, TC Daily Planet

Vangeline Ortega tells her story, and asks you to do two things: Sign an organ donation form. And get tested for diabetes — especially if you are a person of color.

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OPINION | More teachers of color needed

By Luwam Arefe, Community Voices

As an African American male, I understand I’m a minority in education. Less than two percent of our nation’s teachers are black men, while fifteen percent of the country’s public school students are. While our most effective educators come from all backgrounds, those who share our students’ backgrounds can have a profound additional impact as mentors and role models. In our low-income communities where a majority of students are African-American and Latino, our students need to see their faces and experiences reflected in more of their teachers and leaders. I was glad to see this topic being discussed in the March 22nd piece: Race Matters for Teachers and Students.

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Rabbi Zimmerman on the graffiti at Temple Israel

By Bradley Machov, TC Jewfolk

Temple Israel was vandalized last week. On Friday afternoon I sat down with Rabbi Zimmerman of Temple Israel to get an update on how the investigation and the cleanup are going, and what this says about the state of the Jewish community in the Twin Cities.

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TC Jewfolk

Kids aren't colorblind. Your conversations with them shouldn't be either.

By Christena Cleveland, The Reconciliation Lab

One of the most dramatic moments in Losing Isaiah, a film about a socio-economically oppressed black child who is adopted by a well-off white family, occurs when Isaiah’s older, adopted sister places her white hand next to his brown hand and kindly asks him how their two hands differ. Bravo to the sister for even broaching the topic of race with little Isaiah. If she were a real person (as a opposed to a fictional Hollywood character), she’d be in the minority; a 2007 study found that nonwhite parents are about three times more likely to talk about race with their kids than white parents.[i]My sense is that many adults like to think that young kids are naturally “colorblind” and that pointing out and discussing racial distinctions with kids will somehow bias them. As a result, they just don’t talk about race with the kids they know. In some ways, this is a noble and hopeful approach – but unfortunately it’s misguided. Kids aren’t colorblind.

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The Reconciliation Lab

"The Dakota Prisoner of War Letters": Clifford Canku and Michael Simon illuminate a dark corner of Minnesota history

By Jay Gabler, Front Row Seat

An 1865 drawing of Camp Kearney at Davenport, Iowa. The Dakota prison can be seen at top left. Courtesy Minnesota Historical Society.

After seeing Django Unchained, I wrote about how slow Minnesota has been to see the plank in its own eye when casting judgment on the cruel history of slavery in the south. Dakota and other Native inhabitants of our land were treated brutally during westward expansion, and that treatment precipitated the deadly Dakota War of 1862—perhaps the darkest moment in our state's history.

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