Anti-Racism Resources
Essays
How to Support the Struggle Against Police Brutality
by Claire Lampen
How to Deconstruct Racism, One Headline at a Time (TED talk)
by Baratunde Thurston
How to Be an Antiracist
- a conversation with Ibram X. Kendi (2019)
For Our White Friends Desiring to be Allies
By Courtney Ariel
Detour-Spotting for white anti-racists
by Jona Olsson
A Call for Moral Courage in America
by Darren Walker & Ford Foundation
Books
by Alex S. Vitale
This book attempts to spark public discussion by revealing the tainted origins of modern policing as a tool of social control. It shows how the expansion of police authority is inconsistent with community empowerment, social justice-- even public safety. Drawing on groundbreaking research from across the world, and covering virtually every area in the increasingly broad range of police work, Alex Vitale demonstrates how law enforcement has come to exacerbate the very problems it is supposed to solve.
(272 pages)
by Jenna Arnold (2020)
Raising Our Hands is the reckoning cry for white women. It asks us to step up and join the new frontlines of the fight against complacency—in our homes, in our behaviors, and in our own minds. In these pages, Arnold peels back the history that’s been kept out of textbooks and the cultural norms that are holding us back, so we can finally start really listening to marginalized voices and doing our part to promote progress.
(250 pages)
by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?
(176 pages)
by Michelle Alexander (2010)
In this incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander provocatively argues that we have not ended racial caste in America: we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community and all of us—to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.
(336 pages)
by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí (1997)
The "woman question," this book asserts, is a Western one, and not a proper lens for viewing African society. A work that rethinks gender as a Western construction, The Invention of Women offers a new way of understanding both Yoruban and Western cultures. Oyěwùmí traces the misapplication of Western, body-oriented concepts of gender through the history of gender discourses in Yoruba studies. Her analysis shows the paradoxical nature of two fundamental assumptions of feminist theory: that gender is socially constructed in old Yoruba society, and that social organization was determined by relative age.
(256 pages)
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
by Resmaa Menakem (2017)
The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze. My Grandmother’s Hands is a call to action for Americans to recognize that racism is not about the head, but about the body. Author Resmaa Menakem introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.
(300 pages)
by Angela Y. Davis (2003)
Amid rising public concern about the proliferation and privatization of prisons, and their promise of enormous profits, world-renowned author and activist Angela Y. Davis argues for the abolition of the prison system as the dominant way of responding to America's social ills.
(128 pages)
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race
by Beverly Daniel Tatum (2017)
Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.
(464 pages)
Movies & TV
The Hate U Give (2018)
dir. George Tillman Jr.
Starr Carter is constantly switching between two worlds -- the poor, mostly black neighborhood where she lives and the wealthy, mostly white prep school that she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is soon shattered when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer. Facing pressure from all sides of the community, Starr must find her voice and decide to stand up for what's right.
(Available on Hulu with Cinemax, YouTube, Google Play, and iTunes)
13th (2016)
dir. Ava Duvernay
Delves into the deep systematic inequalities and flaws of the industrial prison complex. the most basic understanding of the corrupt and unjust imprisonment system is laid out for any viewer to comprehend.
(Available on Netflix)
Dear White People (2014)
dir. Justin Simien
A campus culture war between blacks and whites at a predominantly white school comes to a head when the staff of a humour magazine stages an offensive Halloween party.
(Available on YouTube, Google Play, and iTunes)
When They See Us (2019)
dir. Ava Duvernay
A dramatized account of the central park five, the instance of five innocent men being convicted and sentenced for the rape and assault of a white jogger. The show follows the corrupt trial that landed each of them in prison.
(Available on Netflix)
If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
dir. Barry Jenkins
In early 1970s Harlem, daughter and wife-to-be Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that have connected her and her artist fiancé Alonzo Hunt, who goes by the nickname Fonny. Friends since childhood, the devoted couple dream of a future together, but their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit.
(Available on Hulu, YouTube, Google Play, and iTunes)
The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)
dir. David France
Everyone should know that Marsha P. Johnson was at the forefront of the Stonewall riots for black trans women in NYC, and consequently sparked the revolution. She was found floating in the Hudson river in 1992.
(Available on Netflix)
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015)
dir. Stanley Nelson Jr.
Nelson navigates the emergence of the Panther party in the 60s and its lasting impact on civil rights and american society. incredibly relevant to the current state of revolution today.
(Available on YouTube, Google Play, and iTunes)
Fruitvale Station (2013)
dir. Ryan Coogler
Though he once spent time in San Quentin, 22-year-old black man Oscar Grant is now trying hard to live a clean life and support his girlfriend and young daughter. Flashbacks reveal the last day in Oscar's life, in which he accompanied his family and friends to San Francisco to watch fireworks on New Year's Eve, and, on the way back home, became swept up in an altercation with police that ended in tragedy. Based on a true story.
(Available on Tubi, YouTube, Google Play, and iTunes)