Anti-Racist Resources

July 13, 2020

I’m pulling together resources to help with my personal education on white supremacy, policing and related topics.

I believe the Zionist history of the founding of the State of Israel and its subjugation and occupation of Palestinians mirrors the colonization of the U.S. and subjugation of the Indigenous peoples and Africans brought to this country as slaves.

Neither Israelis nor Americans have come to terms with our past, nor honestly reconciled with the descendants that continue to bear the brunt of our cruelty to this day.

I will continue to add resources to this list as I come across them.  If you have recommendations to add to this list, please email me LoraLucero3@gmail.com   I hope you find this helpful.

The Truth about the Confederacy in the United States (1 hour 40 minutes video) available here – Jeffery Robinson, the ACLU’s top racial justice expert, discusses the dark history of Confederate symbols across the country and outlines what we can do to learn from our past and combat systemic racism. UPDATED 7/13/20

Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources available here.  Friends who are ready to get serious about our education on racism and white supremacy: There is a wealth of information included here for all ages. This resource has books, podcasts, videos and links to other resources, as well as many contacts on social media. The goal is to facilitate growth for white folks to become allies, and eventually accomplices for anti-racist work. These resources have been ordered in an attempt to make them more accessible. We will continue to add resources. UPDATED 06/12/20

Seeing White podcast (14 episodes) on Scene on Radio available here.

Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Anti-Racism Resources for All Ages — Cooke, N. A. (2020, May 30). [A project of the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at the University of South Carolina]. Available here.

This project emerged out of the pain and frustration associated with the back-to-back deaths of #GeorgeFloyd #BreonnaTaylor and #AhmaudArbery in 2020.
We must do better as a global society! #BlackLivesMatter

This list is not a panacea. This compilation of resources is JUST A STARTING POINT to encourage people to do their own work and have their own hard conversations.

White Privilege Checklist compiled by Peggy McIntosh, associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.  Available here.

I decided to try to work on myself at least by identifying some of the daily effects of white privilege in my life. I have chosen those conditions that I think in my case attach somewhat more to skin-color privilege than to class, religion, ethnic status, or geographic location, though of course all these other factors are intricately intertwined. As far as I can tell, my African American coworkers, friends, and acquaintances with whom I come into daily or frequent contact in this particular time, place and time of work cannot count on most of these conditions.

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad   Available here.

Me and White Supremacy: A 28-Day Challenge to Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor leads readers through a journey of understanding their white privilege and participation in white supremacy, so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on black, indigenous and people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too. The book goes beyond the original workbook by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and includes expanded definitions, examples, and further resources.

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates was first published in The Atlantic in June 2014. I remember exactly where I was sitting when I first read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ opus magnum that summer — on my friend’s porch in Gilroy, CA. Today I listened to the audio version and was reminded of why reparations is a critical piece of the discussion Americans must have when we truly take stock of the evil of racism and white supremacy.

TheAtlantic · The Case for Reparations – The Atlantic – Ta-Nehisi Coates

The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale, free E-book from Verso.

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.

“Cops and the Klan”: Police Disavowal of Risk and Minimization of Threat from the Far-Right (article by Taimi Castle published February 15, 2020) Available online here.

Critical scholars argue that contemporary policing practices reproduce colonial logics through the maintenance of racial and economic inequality. In this article, I extend the framing of policing as a colonial project grounded in white supremacy to an analysis of police responses to white power mobilization during a heightened period of activity and violence (2015–2017). Borrowing from Perry and Scrivens (2018), I identify the two most common police responses—“disavowal of risk” and “minimization of threat”—in the official investigations into the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017. Based on an analysis of newspaper reports from across the United States during the two-year period since then, I found that local and federal law enforcement consistently trivialized the presence of white power groups in the community, elevated the potential threat from protestors, concentrated intelligence efforts on activists, and provided differential protection to white supremacists.

Social Justice: Fifteen titles to address inequity, equality, and organizing for young readers | Great Books by Taylor Worley (March 5, 2020) Available online here.

Documentary film “Birth of a Movement” available here.

D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation” was America’s first epic blockbuster, and the first feature film to screen at the White House.  The 1915 film’s plot glorified the Ku Klux Klan in a re-imagined post-Civil War America. Packs of white men wearing hoods thunder through “Birth of a Nation” on horseback while white actors in blackface play slaves who turn lawless and violent after being freed. The new documentary “Birth of a Movement” explores “Birth of a Nation” through a modern lens.

A large compilation of Anti-Racism Resources from Solsara includes:

• organizations to consider making donations
• black-owned businesses to support
• black social justice leaders
• Introduction to Being Anti-Racist (including the Seeing White podcast)
• Next Steps for White People
• Online courses
• Short videos and movies
• LONG list of books and articles

Check it all out here.

RESOURCES FOR TALKING ABOUT RACE, RACISM AND RACIALIZED VIOLENCE WITH KIDS (Center for Racial Justice in Education) includes:

• Interviews/Advice from Experts
• Compilation of resource lists from others
• Articles
• 2016 Election Resources, Teaching Tolerance
• Affinity Spaces

Check it all out here.

Reckoning with white supremacy: Five fundamentals for white folks by Lovely Cooper

1. White supremacy is not “just” racism.  Read: Kari Points & Evangeline Weiss’s tactics for helping white women challenge white supremacy, Lizzy Hazeltine

2. Today’s police system is rooted in slavery.  Read: Where do the police come from? Neal Shirley & Saralee Stafford

3. The news has always been influenced to evoke sympathy towards cops and resentment towards protestors.  Read: Police and the silent majority, Seth Farber

4. Yes, you are inherently part of the problem.  Read: White silence is tragic silence, Matt Hartman

5. If you really care about what’s going on, you need to listen to people of color before doing anything else.  White skin, Isaac S. Villegas and  I pledge allegiance to the Always Not Yet, Zaina Alsous and A dispatch from the streets of Charlotte, Danielle Purifoy and  Don’t call the police on poverty, Lamont Lilly

Further reading:  Black lives matter—so should their votes, Mac McCann (The Electoral College was balanced to empower slave states in the 18th century—today it continues to disempower Black voters.)  White people who want to end gun violence need to combat white supremacy, David Straughn  (No one is immune to the bullets sprayed or the cars driven in the intense, seething rage of white supremacist anger at its peak. No one is safe. When white supremacy prevails, we all suffer.)

 22 Race-related films that will make you laugh, cry and think differently