Dr. Kira Hudson Banks

When pink toenails raise alarms

Kira Banks — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 02:29:22 +0000

By now, you might have heard about the hoopla surrounding a young boy with pink toenails. Perhaps you missed it, but the creative director of J.Crew was photographed playing with her son. It was an adorable, loving moment captured by the lens, but much of the focus has been on the fact that his toenails were painted…… PINK! Jon Stewart offers a comedic summary of the brouhaha.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

Don’t edit out the n-word

Kira Banks — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 02:28:04 +0000

I recently was invited to speak at Metro Academic and Classical High School about the removal of the “n-word” from Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” and how such a move reflects changes in America’s views on slavery and race.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

Anecdotes should come with warnings

Kira Banks — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 03:26:03 +0000

We think we know something based on our personal experience. We do, and we don’t. Anecdotes, my-best-friend stories, and urban legends can inform our interactions but should never be the sole basis for theories or policies. That’s plain dangerous.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

Black history month: Why we still need it

Kira Banks — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 03:22:51 +0000

Every year in February, without fail, the question about Black History Month arises: “Why do we still need it?”

Here are my top three reasons why the month exists.

1. To learn history we have yet to encounter.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

Going backward in schools

Kira Banks — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:21:03 +0000

Get a bunch of psychologists together who are also mothers, and there is bound to be scrutiny related to anything our children might come into contact with — namely, the education system. So, when my good friend began expressing concern about the shifts in her local school district (Wake County, Raleigh, N.C.), I listened attentively but failed to fully grasp the implications.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

A reporter and the n-word

Kira Banks — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 03:19:36 +0000

A jury will be in the position to decide if Tom Burlington, a reporter-anchor for a Philadelphia television station, was wrongly fired. While the complexities of this individual case bear out in court, I continue to be amused (it’s a better option than infuriated, at times) that we are willing to consider wrongdoing in this individual scenario yet remain resistant to acknowledging systemic disparities.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

Leaders or Tokens?

Kira Banks — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:35:30 +0000

A recent Pew Research Center poll found that there is no consensus about a national Latino leader. My critique is not with the research but with the cultural tendency to frame questions about leadership and people of color in such a way. To be fair, the question was part of a larger bilingual national telephone survey that reached 1,375 Hispanic Americans. But to my knowledge, we have yet to explicitly survey White Americans to assess who they consider the most important White American leader in the country today.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

Picking sides won’t solve the problem

Kira Banks — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:00:02 +0000

From my vantage point, we have more to be concerned about than party politics. When it comes to racial matter, we are like a traumatized child, dissociating at pivotal moments in U.S. history, enacting those injured selves simultaneously as we attempt to interact. The current colorblind rhetoric does little to help us make sense of our selves or to help us move forward.

Read the full article at stlbeacon.org

See no Race, See no Gay: What Proponents of a Gay-Blind Approach to Bullying in the Schools can Learn from Race Relations

Kira Banks — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:47:43 +0000

Pssst…… Refusing to acknowledge differences won’t make them go away.

Over the past few weeks, we have been inundated with stories of bullied and shamed young people taking their own lives due to the hostile environment of socially sanctioned hate.

Just this September three teens committed suicide after experiencing severe bullying: 15-year-old Billy Lucas of Indiana, 13-year old Asher Brown of Texas, and 13-year-old of California. All three teens were self-identified as, or perceived by their classmates to be, gay. Also in September Tyler Clementi, an 18-year -old freshman at Rutgers University, committed suicide after his roommate video taped him having an encounter with another boy and streamed the video over the internet to other students, and 19-year-old Zach Harrington committed suicide after attending a homophobia-filled City Council meeting in Norman, Oklahoma, where his neighbors opposed the designation of October as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered History Month.

Read the full article at Psychology Today

No throwing babies!

Kira Banks — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:10:02 +0000

A string of recent news stories have been fodder for those who cannot tolerate ambiguity in relation to race. Often in our country people are criticized for being too sensitive about the topic and making something out of nothing. Yet those ambiguous events matter, and perceptions matter. It is not only unfair but also dismissive to push an issue aside simply because it does not land clearly in one camp or another in our own thinking.

Read the full story at stlbeacon.org