TIME 100 Icons Meghan and Harry Call Global Citizens to Action in Central Park

Harry and Meghan head the list: TIME 100 Most Influential People

Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are headliners in this year’s TIME 100. Their own narrative was written by Spanish chef José Andrés, founder of World Central Kitchen, a non-profit devoted to providing meals in the wake of natural disasters.

The trio combined their activist energies in December 2020, when José Andrés and his non-profit, World Central Kitchen, became the first major charitable contribution of Harry and Meghan’s Archwell charity.

Harry and Meghan | Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweaka | UN Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield

AOC wrote about Harry and Meghan’s activist work on COVID vaccinations worldwide in our introduction of TIME 100: Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director General of the World Trade Organization. Prince Harry and Meghan asked the question: what will it take to vaccinate the world? “Unity, cooperation and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,” is their answer.

As Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance (2016 – 2020) and also AU COVID-19 Special Envoy and WHO COVID-19 Special Envoy, Okonjo-Iweala has existing skills and knowledge around global vaccine efforts.

Writing about the Trump administration’s blocking of Okonjo-Iweala’s rise to head of the WTO, we noted her close relationship with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, now US President Biden’s UN Ambassador. As we predicted, one of the very first initiatives in the new Biden Administration was to end the Trump blockade against Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

Global Citizens Held Hands September 24th in Central Park

AOC’s dot-connecting came full circle on Saturday with the truly epic Global Citizen concert that ran for 24 hrs. moving around the globe. The New York City Central Park action went live post-Paris at about 5pm. An hour or two in to the concert, it was clear that someone was in the house. Cries of glee, clapping — some rock star had arrived.

Well, they are rock stars — Meghan and Harry — and it was our chance to claim them as our own. The crowd was in love with the couple — as is AOC. Are they perfect? No, for heavens sake. And who is? We are so happy to have these global activists making their home now in America. We need them here, as America tries to get our act together once again.

“My wife and I believe that where you’re born should not dictate your ability to survive,” Prince Harry said. “So Global Citizens, we ask you tonight: Do you think we should start treating access to the vaccine as a basic human right?

“When we start making decisions through that lens, where every single person deserves equal access to the vaccine, then we can achieve what is needed together for all of us,” he added. 

And then who did Harry and Meghan introduce next at the Global Citizen ? UN ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who they met for the first time earlier in their New York City visit.

Harry and Meghan: Glamping in Botswana to Hollywood Royalty

The Wall Street Journal wrote last week Prince Harry and Meghan Hustle to Become Royalty — in Hollywood. Like the Obamas, the couple has media deals with Netflix and Spotify and have already produced a six-segment mental health series for Apple TV.

29 Million US viewers watched Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2018 wedding, compared to 23 million US viewers for Prince William and Kate Middleton. Our own postings about Harry and Meghan’s wedding remain high in Google search results.

In fact, it wasn’t the wedding that was on my mind last week, when thinking about Harry and Meghan pre-Global Citizens Concert. I’ve always been interested in the trend towards glamping. My partner’s children thought it was hilarious that I once wore kitten heels on a camping trip and took about 100 pics of my feet.

It was then that I knew glamping, not camping, was in my future. Writing about an imaginary wedding proposal on a glamping trip — inspired by a real life wedding featured in British Vogue — triggered my memory of writing about Harry and Meghan’s third date — when they flew to Botswana in Africa.

As Harry put it: “We camped out with each other under the stars, sharing a tent and all that stuff. It was fantastic.”

In the AOC article Harry was promoting the National Geographic documentary ‘‘Into the Okavango’ . I couldn’t help thinking about Harry and Meghan and Harry’s profound attachment to Africa. Harry described his pre-Meghan relationship to Africa as one in which he loses himself in the bush. “This is where I feel more like myself than anywhere else in the world. I wish I could spend more time here….”

Writing about energy vortexes on AOC’s imaginary glamping trip to the American Southwest, I knew that Harry and Meghan would share the same enthusiasm, based on their third date at Botswana’s sustainable Meno a Kwena safari lodge.

Botswana’s sustainable Meno a Kwena safari lodge. Courtesy

VA Supreme Court Says Dead White Men Do Not Rule: Remove the Damn Statue!

The statue of Confederate military leader, anti-United States successionist General Robert E. Lee has loomed six stories tall over Virginia’s state government and its citizens in Richmond since 1890. After a never-ending series of court battles, the VA Supreme Court ruled definitively last Thursday that the state of Virginia may now begin to disassemble the infamous, 12-ton statue.

The court ruled that "restrictive covenants" in the 1887 and 1890 deeds that transferred the statue to the state no longer apply. In June 2021

Virginia Solicitor General Toby Heytens argued before the court for less than a minute last June, regarding one of two cases seeking to block removal of the Lee statue that “no court has ever recognized a personal, inheritable right to dictate the content of poor government speech about a matter of racial equality, and this court should not be the first one ever to do so.”

Virginians who sued to keep the Confederate General in place to rule over Richmond are Helen Marie Taylor, John-Lawrence Smith, Evan Morgan Massey, Janet Heltzel and George D. Hostetler — and, in the second case, William Gregory, a descendant of the original landowners.

"Those restrictive covenants are unenforceable as contrary to public policy and for being unreasonable because their effect is to compel government speech, by forcing the Commonwealth to express, in perpetuity, a message with which it now disagrees," the justices wrote.

Gov. Ralph Northam said upon the announcement of the court’s ruling: “Today it is clear—the largest Confederate monument in the South is coming down.”

Over a hundred thousand witnesses attended the erection and unveiling of the statue in 1890. The event represented a clear turn in the burgeoning growth of perpetuating a Southern Lost Cause mythology.

As historian David Blight wrote in ‘Race and Reunion’, “More than ghosts emerged from the Richmond unveiling of 1890; a new, more dynamic Lost Cause was thrown into bold relief as well. “

Blight set the stage for the unveiling: “The orator, Archer Anderson, treasurer of the Tredegar Iron Works, set the tone for the Lee remembered, the man of “moral strength and moral beauty.” The monument, said Anderson, stood not for “a record of civil strife, but as a perpetual protest against whatever is low and sordid in our public and private objects.”’

Clearly slavery didn’t qualify as “low and sordid” in the minds of the massive crowd. But as newspapers noted across America, the statue forced the entire nation to explain away Lee’s alleged greatness as millions came to worship at the altar of the Confederate general.

In its own legal documents before the court, the current state of Virginia wrote:

“Symbols matter, and the Virginia of today can no longer honor a racist system that enslaved millions of people. Installing a grandiose monument to the Lost Cause was wrong in 1890, and demanding that it stay up forever is wrong now.”

Related: Virginia Museum Will Lead Efforts to Reimagine Richmond Avenue Once Lined With Confederate Monuments Smithsonian Magazine

Explaining Critical Race Theory: What It Is and What It Is Not

By David Miguel Gray, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Affiliate, Institute for Intelligent Systems, University of Memphis. First published on The Conversation

U.S. Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana sent a letter to fellow Republicans on June 24, 2021, stating: “As Republicans, we reject the racial essentialism that critical race theory teaches … that our institutions are racist and need to be destroyed from the ground up.”

Kimberlé Crenshaw, a law professor and central figure in the development of critical race theory, said in a recent interview that critical race theory “just says, let’s pay attention to what has happened in this country, and how what has happened in this country is continuing to create differential outcomes. … Critical Race Theory … is more patriotic than those who are opposed to it because … we believe in the promises of equality. And we know we can’t get there if we can’t confront and talk honestly about inequality.”

Rep. Banks’ account is demonstrably false and typical of many people publicly declaring their opposition to critical race theory. Crenshaw’s characterization, while true, does not detail its main features. So what is critical race theory and what brought it into existence?

The development of critical race theory by legal scholars such as Derrick Bell and Crenshaw was largely a response to the slow legal progress and setbacks faced by African Americans from the end of the Civil War, in 1865, through the end of the civil rights era, in 1968. To understand critical race theory, you need to first understand the history of African American rights in the U.S.

The History

After 304 years of enslavement, then-former slaves gained equal protection under the law with passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868. The 15th Amendment, in 1870, guaranteed voting rights for men regardless of race or “previous condition of servitude.”

Between 1866 and 1877 – the period historians call “Radical Reconstruction” – African Americans began businesses, became involved in local governance and law enforcement and were elected to Congress.

This early progress was subsequently diminished by state laws throughout the American South called “Black Codes,” which limited voting rights, property rights and compensation for work; made it illegal to be unemployed or not have documented proof of employment; and could subject prisoners to work without pay on behalf of the state. These legal rollbacks were worsened by the spread of “Jim Crow” laws throughout the country requiring segregation in almost all aspects of life.

Grassroots struggles for civil rights were constant in post-Civil War America. Some historians even refer to the period from the New Deal Era, which began in 1933, to the present as “The Long Civil Rights Movement.”

The period stretching from Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which found school segregation to be unconstitutional, to the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination in housing, was especially productive.

The civil rights movement used practices such as civil disobedience, nonviolent protest, grassroots organizing and legal challenges to advance civil rights. The U.S.’s need to improve its image abroad during the Cold War importantly aided these advancements. The movement succeeded in banning explicit legal discrimination and segregation, promoted equal access to work and housing and extended federal protection of voting rights.

However, the movement that produced legal advances had no effect on the increasing racial wealth gap between Blacks and whites, while school and housing segregation persisted.

What critical race theory is

Critical race theory is a field of intellectual inquiry that demonstrates the legal codification of racism in America.

Through the study of law and U.S. history, it attempts to reveal how racial oppression shaped the legal fabric of the U.S. Critical race theory is traditionally less concerned with how racism manifests itself in interactions with individuals and more concerned with how racism has been, and is, codified into the law.

There are a few beliefs commonly held by most critical race theorists.

First, race is not fundamentally or essentially a matter of biology, but rather a social construct. While physical features and geographic origin play a part in making up what we think of as race, societies will often make up the rest of what we think of as race. For instance, 19th- and early-20th-century scientists and politicians frequently described people of color as intellectually or morally inferior, and used those false descriptions to justify oppression and discrimination.

Second, these racial views have been codified into the nation’s foundational documents and legal system. For evidence of that, look no further than the “Three-Fifths Compromise” in the Constitution, whereby slaves, denied the right to vote, were nonetheless treated as part of the population for increasing congressional representation of slave-holding states.

Third, given the pervasiveness of racism in our legal system and institutions, racism is not aberrant, but a normal part of life.

Fourth, multiple elements, such as race and gender, can lead to kinds of compounded discrimination that lack the civil rights protections given to individual, protected categories. For example, Crenshaw has forcibly argued that there is a lack of legal protection for Black women as a category. The courts have treated Black women as Black, or women, but not both in discrimination cases – despite the fact that they may have experienced discrimination because they were both.

These beliefs are shared by scholars in a variety of fields who explore the role of racism in areas such as education, health care and history.

Finally, critical race theorists are interested not just in studying the law and systems of racism, but in changing them for the better.

What critical race theory is not

“Critical race theory” has become a catch-all phrase among legislators attempting to ban a wide array of teaching practices concerning race. State legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and West Virginia have introduced legislation banning what they believe to be critical race theory from schools.

But what is being banned in education, and what many media outlets and legislators are calling “critical race theory,” is far from it. Here are sections from identical legislation in Oklahoma and Tennessee that propose to ban the teaching of these concepts. As a philosopher of race and racism, I can safely say that critical race theory does not assert the following:

(1) One race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;

(2) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously;

(3) An individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex;

(4) An individual’s moral character is determined by the individual’s race or sex;

(5) An individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;

(6) An individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.

What most of these bills go on to do is limit the presentation of educational materials that suggest that Americans do not live in a meritocracy, that foundational elements of U.S. laws are racist, and that racism is a perpetual struggle from which America has not escaped.

Americans are used to viewing their history through a triumphalist lens, where we overcome hardships, defeat our British oppressors and create a country where all are free with equal access to opportunities.

Obviously, not all of that is true.

Critical race theory provides techniques to analyze U.S. history and legal institutions by acknowledging that racial problems do not go away when we leave them unaddressed.