Journal of a Black Teacher

We are still waiting for a change that isn’t built on the corpse of another Black man. The evolution of our intellectual trauma continues.  The chart below is from Minnesota's Spotlight on Poverty https://spotlightonpoverty.org/states/minnesota/ By Don Allen, Journal of A Black Teacher (2025) The tragic murder of George Floyd under the knee of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sparked global protests, forced America into a national reckoning on race, and ignited a multi-billion-dollar industry around social justice. But we must now, years later, ask a hard and perhaps uncomfortable question: Would Black society be any different if George Floyd had died of old age? The answer, while layered in nuance and painful truth, is not as clear-cut as the mainstream narrative would suggest. Since Floyd’s death in May 2020, hundreds more Black men across the country have been killed in encounters with law enforcement. According to Mapping Police Violence, over 1,000 people are ki...

By Don Allen, Journal of A Black Teacher - (2025) (Image generated by Canva, 2025) Lenses : Satire, Editorial Opinion I was enjoying my own pleasantly subdued Twin Cities Monday morning when the announcers began to rave—no, preach—about the Almighty Storm. “...Updates in the 6 AM hour on how you should prepare for the possibilities of heavy thunderstorms with a chance of hail and tornadoes.” Yes, I was caught up in the hype, too. This is how it starts. You could almost hear the timpani booming under the Doppler radar maps: an angry sky god was supposedly hovering somewhere over Iowa, deciding which of its favorite metropolises to annihilate. Cue shots of ominous purple blobs creeping in from the west and north, cue anchor-desk gravity, cue dramatic pauses worthy of Shakespearean portent. And like every other sensible Twin Citian who's been conditioned to believe that neon weather maps are the new Dead Sea Scrolls, I made a beeline for the nearest Cub Foods. There, in a tableau wort...