racism Archives - Neighborhood View

Cartoonist Keith Knight reflects on growing up in Malden, education, race and the value of art

July 12, 2022 annedr 3

By Anne D’Urso-Rose Keith Knight, a Malden native, infuses his work with humor, creativity and social activism. His nationally syndicated cartoon series (K Chronicles, DAILY, and (th)ink) have won awards and inspired the live-action comedy series “Woke” on Hulu. Loosely based on some of his real life events, Knight co-created the show with Marshall Todd and drew the animation that opens the show. Knight went to high school in Malden, lived for a while in California’s Bay area (where the “Woke” series is based), later moved to Los Angeles and now lives with his wife and two children in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Knight returned to the Boston area last May to give the commencement address at Salem State University, his alma mater. On May 22, he attended the unveiling of the mural he created for the Malden Arts mural series along the Northern Strand Bike Trail near the Breakfast Club (formerly Doo Wop) Diner. The mural is a Malden-centric take on his popular comic series “Life’s Little Victories.” Neighborhood View caught up with Knight […]

Incident sparks racial equity measures and further discourse in Malden

February 15, 2022 Saliha Bayrak 0

By Saliha Bayrak A series of recent events in Malden have deepened the city’s ongoing social discourse about racial equity, particularly as it relates to the Asian-American community, and have led to new initiatives by the City Council. On Dec. 11, 2021, roughly 100 Malden residents gathered outside the Malden City Hall Plaza, in a city home to over 13,000 Asian residents, for what they called a standout. The demonstrators held up signs reading “Stop Asian Hate,” led chants and created noise with drums and cymbals. The standout was part of an ongoing effort to address issues of race and representation in Malden, this time sparked by a social media post. In November 2021, images of City Councilor Jadeane Sica wearing a Halloween costume, which were deemed racist by organizations such as the Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition (GMAACC), were re-surfaced after being first posted on Facebook in 2019. Sica and her husband were portraying an Asian sex worker and Patriots owner Bob Kraft, a reference to Kraft’s arrest for soliciting prostitution at the […]

Uncomfortable Conversations: Staff and board at UMA take on race and social justice through internal dialogue

March 2, 2021 Saliha Bayrak 0

By Saliha Bayrak As the nation rose to voice their indignation and call for an end to racial injustice following the murder of George Floyd, Urban Media Arts (UMA), joined thousands of organizations across the country and made a statement of solidarity to champion the Black Lives Matter movement. The staff at UMA (formerly MATV) did not want this statement to be a momentary and hollow expression of support without any actions to succeed it. In the months that followed, staff members began to have periodic meetings and discussions to address issues of race, injustice, and inclusivity, guided by the belief that every course of action begins with a conversation. Terlonzo Amos, the Director of Operations at UMA, believes there is an urgency to have these conversations now due to the recent blatantly unjust events that occurred throughout the nation. “These problems have always been in the Black and brown community…since 1619,” said Amos. “For those that may not have believed that these things were happening…a light was shown on it.” Amos often leads these […]

Malden Reads mulls book selection for 2021

September 8, 2020 NeighborhoodView 0

By Heather Barry Earlier this summer, as the Malden Reads steering committee began its book selection process for 2021, it faced a season and mood in the community and country very different from its previous ten years. On top of the COVID-19 pandemic, the country has been wracked with a coming to terms of 400 years of systemic racism, sparked by the murder of George Floyd, and brought to life by protestors from coast to coast. These important and ongoing events informed the discussions of this year’s books. Once the book is selected, Malden Reads will invite the community of Malden to read the book and participate in a series of events related to the book’s themes. “At the end of the day, we want to point people toward a quality book with an important story that needs to be heard,” said Steering Committee member Martha Bezzat. “This particular year, we were open to themes about the ongoing crisis of racism, the trauma of the global pandemic, and resilience in communities.” She added, “The journey to […]

Keep Drawing, Keep (Th)inking: the Keith Knight Story

August 27, 2020 Sky Malerba 2

By Sky Malerba Born and raised in Malden, MA, cartoonist, rapper, teacher and activist Keith Knight delighted in drawing since early childhood. This week, Keith Knight is the subject for Malden Arts Mondays, a two-month long celebration of artists and figures associated with Malden. “I always used to draw on walls, and draw in class, and I’d never get in trouble for it, in fact, I kept on getting higher grades,” he said of his school experiences. He drew cartoons based on George Orwell’s Animal Farm and used portraits of his classmates and teachers as an analogue to a character in the story. “You should be doing a syndicated cartoon,” his teacher told him. That was the beginning of Keith Knight’s career as a highly regarded American cartoonist 20 years ago. Knight graduated from Malden High in 1984 and after a brief stint as a professional Michael Jackson impersonator in the 1980s, he created perhaps his most memorable in the 1990s. The K Chronicles was a weekly autobiographical comic strip, published in The San Francisco Examiner and then […]

Confronting the anti-Asian backlash in the wake of the pandemic

June 17, 2020 Martha Bezzat 0

By Martha Bezzat Anti-Asian racism has been on the rise since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, something that Dr. Jean Yu-wen Wu, a Tufts University professor and diversity leader, calls “a kind of terrorism.” “It’s about controlling us, telling us we’re not wanted, telling us we don’t belong,” said Dr. Wu during a virtual town hall meeting May 14 sponsored by the Greater Malden Asian American Community Coalition (GMAACC), an organization launched by Malden residents to dismantle historical bias and racism against Asians and Asian Americans. More than 250 people attended the meeting to hear three specialists and a college student speak about their experiences. Dr. Wu called the current anti-Asian bias a “virulent strand” of racism in the United States. She said that while the pandemic didn’t create this racism, it revealed a racism “that’s been deeply embedded in U.S. history and U.S. nation-building.” “It’s important to speak up about racist incidents to increase awareness because the history of Asians in the U.S. is not taught, and so newcomers in the community may not […]

Education

MaldenCORE creates platform to speak on racial inequality

May 6, 2019 ditikohli 0

By Diti Kohli Jennifer Hedrington, a Salemwood School math teacher who is Haitian American, wearily remembered missing out as a child on having a teacher who looked like her. Today she advocates alongside the Malden Community Organizing for Racial Equity to ensure the same won’t happen to any of her seventh grade students. Hedrington is a part of MaldenCORE, a community-based organization that aims to foster more diverse leadership representation in the city, especially in its schools. Starting August 2018, the groups hosts “fourth Wednesday conversations” open to the public in the Markey Senior Center dining room. Members lead inclusive conversations on issues that disproportionately affect communities of color. “The beginning of solving all issues is a conversation,” said Hedrington. “Some of these topics are frustrating and painful, but we have to go through pain to make that change happen.” Past “conversations” addressed bias in the education system, the nature of racial discrimination, and the school-to-prison pipeline that drives disadvantaged students to criminal activity. Last Wednesday, three presenters detailed the origin and history of […]