When will this end?

I watched a movie titled "The Six Triple Eight" this week on Netflix. It's a war drama film directed by Tyler Perry, focusing on the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black and all-female unit to serve overseas during World War II. They were given six months to fix the three-year backlog of undelivered mail in Europe and faced with massive discrimination, they managed to sort more than 17 million pieces of mail and get it delivered to troops. See more here. 

It's a powerful movie and several scenes brought tears to my eyes.  It also reminded me of how the discrimination these women faced did not end with their success in delivering the mail. It continued when they returned to the United States, from the late 1940s till now, entering 2025.

For the past 23 years I've been building a library of articles related to race, poverty, segregation and inequality in America.  

Browse this section and one of the first articles is this one from The Atlantic, asking "How Did We Get Here?" and sharing "163  years of The Atlantic's writing on race and racism in America."   This is one of more than 100 websites I point to in just this one section of the Tutor/Mentor library.

Another section focuses on Black History and also has dozens of links. Scroll to the bottom and you'll find the Zinn Education Project, with teaching materials that educators, parents and youth program leaders can use to expand our collective understanding of this tragic, continuing, history. 

I majored in history at Illinois Wesleyan from 1964 to 1968.  It wasn't until my senior year when I did my senior thesis on the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, which consisted of all African-American enlisted men commanded by white officers, that I was officially exposed to this history. And, it wasn't until I started volunteering with a tutor/mentor program in Chicago, serving elementary school kids from the Cabrini Green neighborhood, that I began to take a personal interest, that has grown over 50 years.

Another section of my library focuses on poverty and crime mapping.  One of the sites is the American Inequality site hosted by Jeremy Ney, with data maps and articles like the one shown below. 

You can also find many links in articles on the Mapping for Justice blog. For instance scroll these articles and you'll see how I've shared the American Inequality site. 

The maps are important. This Pew Research Center article provides facts about the U.S. Black population, which was an estimated 47.9 million in 2022.   Scroll down on this page to look at data about educational attainment and household income.  "Among Black U.S. households in 2022, 27% earned less than $25,000, 23% earned less than $50,000, while 51% made $50,000 or more. A third of Black households (34%) earned $75,000 or more, including 22% that made $100,000 or more."

The maps I share focus on that 27% who earn less than $25,000, and who are living in highly segregated, persistently poor areas of big cities and rural areas.  These are places where organized, on-going, volunteer-based tutor, mentor and learning programs can expand the networks of opportunity for kids living in highly segregated poverty.

However, the color of your skin and racism affects people of all income levels.  Maps can help target resources and programs to areas of high poverty. They can also show incidents of police violence, traffic stops, drug arrests and other systemic practices that affect people of color more than others.  We need to understand and address both issues. 

Many of the sites I point to are libraries themselves, with links to hundreds of additional books, articles, movies, etc.  There's a lot to learn. Maybe too much to learn.  

Yet, without making the effort the racism and inequality that persists in America will continue. Will you add this to your 2025 commitments?

Thanks for reading my articles this year. I hope you're sharing them.

I can be reached on Bluesky, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.  See links on this page.

I depend on a small group of donors to help fund the Tutor/Mentor Institute, LLC and that enables me to keep the library on line and to keep writing articles like this.  If you can help, please visit this page.