Check out these recent articles from around the web:

Becoming a Parent in the Age of Black Lives Matter by Clint Smith: “My children are both respite from all the tragedy transpiring in the world, and a reminder of how high the stakes are.”

Black Catholics: Words Not Enough as Church Decries Racism by the AP: “Black Roman Catholics are hearing their church’s leaders calling for racial justice once again after the killing of George Floyd, but this time they’re demanding not just words but action.”

Black Catholic leaders say more integration in the Church is possible — if all are willing to do the work by Brian Fraga: “Figueroa and other black Catholic leaders told Our Sunday Visitor that the Church in the United States needs to step up to the challenge of bringing about greater racial reconciliation and confronting the toxic legacy of racism against black- and brown-skinned people that still manifests itself in sinful and unjust social conditions and institutions.”

As Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, to confront racism we must find the strength to love by Chloé Valdary: “This attempt to correct injustice is laudable, but the work of anti-racism must be rooted in the moral ethic of love and acknowledge the profound sacredness of human beings.”

These numbers show that black and white people live in two different Americas by Sergio Peçanha: “Numbers can help put American racism in perspective. And here is what the numbers say: The United States is a vastly different country, depending on the color of your skin. For African Americans, hardship begins before birth. The infant mortality rate for blacks, for example, is more than twice that of white Americans.”

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument by Caroline Randall Williams: “I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument.”

Read Up on the Links Between Racism and the Environment by Somini Sengupta: “This week, amid a surge of protests over police violence against black Americans, there’s been renewed scrutiny on the links between racism and environmental degradation in the United States. To help readers understand those links, I put together a quick reading list about climate change and social inequities. These suggestions are meant to be starters, laying out a few entry points.”

Black Families Were Hit Hard by the Pandemic. The Effects on Children May Be Lasting. by Kelly Glass : “Eileen Condon, Ph.D., a nurse practitioner and postdoctoral associate at Yale University School of Nursing, and her colleagues examined the stressors related to the coronavirus pandemic, and how they disproportionately harm disadvantaged and marginalized families.Poverty, food insecurity and housing insecurity are major sources of pervasive stress, Condon said. When a child experiences toxic stress, their stress response is “essentially always activated.””

Elijah McClain’s final words haunt me as the parent of a child who is ‘different’ by Jackie Spinner: “I only knew that being different and black in America means that my son is vulnerable if stopped by police. A 2016 report, analyzing incidents from 2013 to 2015, found that nearly half the people killed by police had some sort of disability. A 2019 study of police-involved deaths found that 1 in every 1,000 black men is at risk of being killed by law enforcement.”