Welcome to TAP Weekly!
We wanted to create a space where we are able to share our thoughts, opinions, and commentary on current events spanning social justice, reparations, and the world of racial inequities, and the idea of writing a weekly blog was born.
While TAP remains focused on pushing for reparative action to be taken to close the racial wealth gap, there are a host of factors that contribute to the existence of such a gap in the first place. This blog will delve into related world issues both past and present and explore the ways in which they are intertwined. We want to learn and share how these connections are the key to rectifying injustice and creating a better world going forward.
We draw inspiration from the diverse world we live in, and we intend to represent our influences with clarity and objectivity. With this in mind, you should expect to see us focus on discussions and investigations of the following:
Reparations, as well as the more general concept of black liberation
Social, political, and economic causes of the existing racial wealth gap
Critical analysis of historical data surrounding race both domestically and abroad
TAP Weekly will allow us to explore the idea of Black liberation– what that means and what it looks like. Reparations, and the discussions surrounding them, should be more than just financial amends for the harm caused by white supremacy. There are deep-rooted societal underpinnings behind simple statistics like the wealth gap, or the lack of education about Black history. TAP Weekly will give us the opportunity to investigate why the racial disparity statistics look like they do, and why so many important moments in Black history have gone overlooked. By putting things into context, we hope to inspire more critical thinking about the nature of injustice and inequality for Black people in the United States. Anti-Black racism and how it operates is not accidental on the part of the U.S., but rather strategic and heavily institutionalized.
We want to leave you with a quote from Assata Shakur’s autobiography, where she describes the impact of her fifth-grade teacher. It serves as an informal mission statement for what TAP Weekly is looking to achieve:
“Before I was in her class, I never would’ve imagined that history was connected to art, that philosophy was connected to science, and so on. The usual way that people are taught to think in Amerika is that each subject is in a little compartment and has no relation to any other subject. For the most part, we receive fragments of unrelated knowledge, and our education follows no logical format or pattern. It is exactly this kind of education that produces people who don’t have the ability to think for themselves and who are easily manipulated.”
The project of TAP Weekly is to combat the way we’ve been taught to stratify ideas and concepts, instead providing information and ideas which transcend the boundaries of race, wealth, power, and ideology. The past cannot be rewritten, but the future is ours for the taking. We look forward to sharing our thoughts with you and opening your mind to new avenues of thinking.
Check back for a new post every Wednesday at 2 pm EST. See you soon!
Bryce Harris, Director of Public Relations
Naima Small, Editorial Director
