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Diversity | Equity | Inclusion Resources at Truman College

Truman College is committed to creating a welcoming, respectful, and diverse and inclusive environment for our students, faculty, and staff. This guide contains links to hundreds of valuable resources on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) topics.

Racism | is "...a system—consisting of structures, policies, practices, and norms—that assigns value and determines opportunity based on the way people look or the color of their skin. This results in conditions that unfairly advantage some and disadvantage others throughout society."

Ethnicity | refers to "a large group of people with a shared culture, language, history, set of traditions, etc., or the fact of belonging to one of these groups."

Racial Equity Tools Glossary | A Working Definition of Racism

Books @ CCC

Cover art Diverse Educators

Cover art Ethics and Race

Cover art The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop

Cover art Courageous Conversations about Race

Cover art America on Fire

Cover art Let's Talk Race

Cover art Black Lives Matter at School

Cover art Inventing Latinos : A New Story of American Racism

Cover art Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor

Cover art Minor Feelings

Cover art How to Be an Antiracist

Cover art Race Dialogues

Cover art So You Want to Talk About Race

Cover art Teaching about Race and Racism in the College Classroom

Cover art Algorithms of Oppression

Cover art White Fragility

Cover art Tears We Cannot Stop

Cover art Uprooting Racism - 4th Edition

Cover art For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of y'all Too

Cover art Stamped From the Beginning : The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Cover art Between the World and Me

Cover art The Making of Asian America

Cover art Educated in Whiteness

Cover art An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

Cover art Start Where You Are, but Don't Stay There

Cover art Everyday Antiracism

Cover art What Makes Racial Diversity Work in Higher Education

Cover art How We Fight White Supremacy : A Field Guide to Black Resistance

Cover art Stay Woke

Cover art We Want to Do More Than Survive

Cover art Not Light, but Fire

Cover art White Guys on Campus

Print Books

Bunyasi, T. L. & Smith, C. W. (2019). Stay woke : a people's guide to making all Black lives matter. New York University Press. "When #BlackLivesMatter went viral in 2013, it shed a light on the urgent, daily struggles of black Americans to combat racial injustice. The message resonated with millions across the country. Yet many of our political, social, and economic institutions are still embedded with racist policies and practices that devalue black lives. Stay Woke directly addresses these stark injustices and builds on the lessons of racial inequality and intersectionality the Black Lives Matter movement has challenged its fellow citizens to learn. In this essential primer, Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith inspire readers to address the pressing issues of racial inequality, and provide a basic toolkit that will equip readers to become knowledgeable participants in public debate, activism, and politics. This book offers a clear vision of a racially just society, and shows just how far we still need to go to achieve this reality. From activists to students to the average citizen, Stay Woke empowers all readers to work toward a better future for black Americans."
Cullors, P. (2020). When they call you a terrorist : a black lives matter memoir. St. Martin's Griffin. Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, Patrisse Khan-Cullors experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For Patrisse, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin's killer went free, Patrisse's outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin. Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering inequality and a movement fueled by her strength and love, to tell the country-- and the world-- that Black Lives Matter.
Ewing, E. L. (2020). Ghosts in the schoolyard : racism and school closings on Chicago's south side. The University of Chicago Press. "Failing schools. Underprivileged schools. Just plain bad schools." That's how Eve L. Ewing opens Ghosts in the Schoolyard: describing Chicago Public Schools from the outside. The way politicians and pundits and parents of kids who attend other schools talk about them, with a mix of pity and contempt. But Ewing knows Chicago Public Schools from the inside: as a student, then a teacher, and now a scholar who studies them. And that perspective has shown her that public schools are not buildings full of failures--they're an integral part of their neighborhoods, at the heart of their communities, storehouses of history and memory that bring people together. Never was that role more apparent than in 2013 when Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced an unprecedented wave of school closings. Pitched simultaneously as a solution to a budget problem, a response to declining enrollments, and a chance to purge bad schools that were dragging down the whole system, the plan was met with a roar of protest from parents, students, and teachers. But if these schools were so bad, why did people care so much about keeping them open, to the point that some would even go on a hunger strike? Ewing's answer begins with a story of systemic racism, inequality, bad faith, and distrust that stretches deep into Chicago history. Rooting her exploration in the historic African American neighborhood of Bronzeville, Ewing reveals that this issue is about much more than just schools. Black communities see the closing of their schools--schools that are certainly less than perfect but that are theirs--as one more in a long line of racist policies. The fight to keep them open is yet another front in the ongoing struggle of black people in America to build successful lives and achieve true self-determination.
Hinton, E. (2021). America on fire : the untold history of police violence and Black rebellion since the 1960s. Liveright Publishing Corporation. What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Hinton shows that the events of 2020 had clear precursors--and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past. She takes us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992, charting the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Hinton warns that rebellions will continue until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality
Jackson, L. M. (2019). White Negroes : when cornrows were in vogue ... and other thoughts on cultural appropriation. Beacon Press. "This book provides a cultural, political, and social survey through the most American of pastimes that continues to thrive today. With narrative, accessible criticism, research, and popular cultural touchstones we can all recognize, I'd like to introduce readers to the black presence that holds up daily life as they know it. It is a crucial account of the people, stories, and culture that create the hilarious, crazy wonder that is life in the 21st century. It is also a wake up call. White Negroes wants to peel open [the] still beating heart of interracial antagonism in this country and expose a form of theft that feels natural only because we are used to it. But we don't have to be. This book documents how this very old tradition shapes our society in the present in the hopes that we can imagine something better. White Negroes will transform what readers think they know about race and culture in the new millennium and open the door to a new present and future unburdened by crimes of the past"
Kaplowitz, D. R., Griffin, S. R., & Seyka, S. (2019). Race dialogues : a facilitator's guide to tackling the elephant in the classroom. Teachers College Press. All too often, race discourse in the United States devolves into shouting matches, silence, or violence, all of which are mirrored in today's classrooms. This book will help individuals develop the skills needed to facilitate difficult dialogues across race in high school and college classrooms, in teacher professional learning communities, and beyond--back cover.
Muhammad, K. G. (2010). The condemnation of blackness : race, crime, and the making of modern urban America. Harvard University Press. Introduction: The mismeasure of crime -- Saving the nation : the racial data revolution and the negro problem -- Writing crime into race : racial criminalization and the dawn of Jim Crow -- Incriminating culture : the limits of racial liberalism in the progressive era -- Preventing crime : white and black reformers in Philadelphia -- Fighting crime : politics and prejudice in the city of brotherly love -- Policing racism : Jim Crow justice in the urban north -- Conclusion: The conundrum of criminality.
Roberts, L. M., Mayo, A. J., & Thomas, D. A. (Eds.). (2019). Race, work, and leadership : new perspectives on the Black experience. Harvard Business Review Press. "Race, Work, and Leadership is a rare and important compilation of essays that examines how race matters in people's experience of work and leadership. What does it mean to be Black in corporate America today? How are racial dynamics in organizations changing in a post-Obama era? How do we build inclusive organizations? Inspired by and developed in conjunction with the research and programming for Harvard Business School's 2018 celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the HBS African American Student Union, this groundbreaking book shines new light on these and other timely questions and illuminates the present-day dynamics of race in the workplace. Contributions from top scholars, researchers, and practitioners in leadership, organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, and education test the relevance of long-held assumptions and reconsider the research approaches and interventions needed to understand and advance African Americans in work settings and leadership roles. At a time when there are fewer African American men and women in corporate leadership roles (following a peak in 2002), Race, Work, and Leadership will stimulate new scholarship and dialogue on the organizational and leadership challenges of African Americans and become the indispensable reference for anyone committed to understanding, studying, and acting on the challenges facing leaders who are building inclusive organizations"-- Provided by publisher.
Zack, N. (2023). Ethics and race : past and present intersections and controversies. Rowman & Littlefield. "Philosophers have traditionally separated the subjects of ethics and race, but every issue concerning race is an ethical issue. Naomi Zack introduces students to historical and contemporary issues of race and racism and provides and ethical foundation for students to critically engage with these issues in the classroom and in their lives. The chapters discuss affirmative action and diversity, current protests from across the political spectrum, police killings, the relevance of race to the effects of disasters and climate change, white privilege as a cause for political impasse, racial identity (including mixed race identities), race and gender, and media representations of race."

eBooks

Baldridge., B. J. (2019). Reclaiming Community : Race and the Uncertain Future of Youth Work. Stanford University Press. Approximately 2.4 million Black youth participate in after-school programs, which offer a range of support, including academic tutoring, college preparation, political identity development, cultural and emotional support, and even a space to develop strategies and tools for organizing and activism. In Reclaiming Community, Bianca Baldridge tells the story of one such community-based program, Educational Excellence (EE), shining a light on both the invaluable role youth workers play in these spaces, and the precarious context in which such programs now exist. Drawing on rich ethnographic data, Baldridge persuasively argues that the story of EE is representative of a much larger and understudied phenomenon. With the spread of neoliberal ideology and its reliance on racism—marked by individualism, market competition, and privatization—these bastions of community support are losing the autonomy that has allowed them to embolden the minds of the youth they serve. Baldridge captures the stories of loss and resistance within this context of immense external political pressure, arguing powerfully for the damage caused when the same structural violence that Black youth experience in school, starts to occur in the places they go to escape it.
Bennett, M. & Zirin, D. (2018). Things That Make White People Uncomfortable. Haymarket Books. This sports book, memoir, and manifesto from a Super Bowl Champion elucidates racism in the United States. Michael Bennett is a Super Bowl Champion, a three-time Pro Bowl defensive end, a fearless activist, a feminist, a grassroots philanthropist, an organizer, and a change maker. He's also one of the most scathingly humorous athletes on the planet, and he wants to make you uncomfortable. Bennett adds his unmistakable voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field. Written with award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin, Things that Make White People Uncomfortable is a sports book for our turbulent times, a memoir, and a manifesto as hilarious and engaging as it is illuminating.
Brown, A. C. (2018). I’m Still Here : Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness. Convergent Books. Austin Channing Brown's first encounter with a racialized America came at age seven, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools and churches, Austin writes, “I had to learn what it means to love blackness,” a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America's racial divide as a writer, speaker, and expert helping organizations practice genuine inclusion.In a time when nearly every institution (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claims to value diversity in its mission statement, Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice. Her stories bear witness to the complexity of America's social fabric—from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations.For readers who have engaged with America's legacy on race through the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, I'm Still Here is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God's ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness—if we let it—can save us all.
Cabrera, N. L. (2019). White Guys on Campus : Racism, White Immunity, and the Myth of “Post-Racial” Higher Education. Rutgers University Press. On April 22, 2015, Boston University professor Saida Grundy set off a Twitter storm with her provocative question: “Why is white America so reluctant to identify white college males as a problem population?” White Guys on Campus is a critical examination of race in higher education, centering Whiteness, in an effort to unveil the frequently unconscious habits of racism among White male undergraduates. Nolan L. Cabrera moves beyond the “few bad apples” frame of contemporary racism, and explores the structures, policies, ideologies, and experiences that allow racism to flourish. This book details many of the contours of contemporary, systemic racism, while engaging the possibility of White students to participate in anti-racism. Ultimately, White Guys on Campus calls upon institutions of higher education to be sites of social transformation instead of reinforcing systemic racism, while creating a platform to engage and challenge the public discourse of “post- racialism.”
Chavez, F. (2021). The anti-racist writing workshop : how to decolonize the creative classroom. Haymarket Books. This easy-to-use guide explains how to recruit, nourish, and fortify writers of color through innovative reading, writing, workshop, critique, and assessment strategies. A captivating mix of memoir and progressive teaching strategies,The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom demonstrates how to be culturally attuned, twenty-first century educators. The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop is a call to create healthy, sustainable, and empowering classroom communities. Award-winning educator Felicia Rose Chavez exposes the invisible politics of power and privilege that have silenced writers of color for far too long. It's more urgent than ever that we consciously work against traditions of dominance in the classroom, but what specific actions can we take to achieve authentically inclusive communities? Together, we will address how to: · Deconstruct our biases to achieve a cultural shift in perspective. · Design a democratic teaching model to create safe spaces for creative concentration. · Recruit, nourish, and fortify students of color to best empower them to exercise voice. · Embolden our students to self-advocate as responsible citizens in a globalized community. Finally, a teaching model that protects and platforms students of color, because every writer deserves access to a public voice. For anyone looking to liberate their thinking from "the way it's always been done,"The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop is a clear, compelling guidebook on a necessary step forward.
DiAngelo, R. (2018). White Fragility : Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press. The New York Times best-selling book exploring the counterproductive reactions white people have when their assumptions about race are challenged, and how these reactions maintain racial inequality. In this “vital, necessary, and beautiful book” (Michael Eric Dyson), antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people'(Claudia Rankine). Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.
Felber, G. (2020). Those Who Know Don’t Say : The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. The University of North Carolina Press. Challenging incarceration and policing was central to the postwar Black Freedom Movement. In this bold new political and intellectual history of the Nation of Islam, Garrett Felber centers the Nation in the Civil Rights Era and the making of the modern carceral state. In doing so, he reveals a multifaceted freedom struggle that focused as much on policing and prisons as on school desegregation and voting rights. The book examines efforts to build broad-based grassroots coalitions among liberals, radicals, and nationalists to oppose the carceral state and struggle for local Black self-determination. It captures the ambiguous place of the Nation of Islam specifically, and Black nationalist organizing more broadly, during an era which has come to be defined by nonviolent resistance, desegregation campaigns, and racial liberalism.By provocatively documenting the interplay between law enforcement and Muslim communities, Felber decisively shows how state repression and Muslim organizing laid the groundwork for the modern carceral state and the contemporary prison abolition movement which opposes it. Exhaustively researched, the book illuminates new sites and forms of political struggle as Muslims prayed under surveillance in prison yards and used courtroom political theater to put the state on trial. This history captures familiar figures in new ways--Malcolm X the courtroom lawyer and A. Philip Randolph the Harlem coalition builder--while highlighting the forgotten organizing of rank-and-file activists in prisons such as Martin Sostre. This definitive account is an urgent reminder that Islamophobia, state surveillance, and police violence have deep roots in the state repression of Black communities during the mid-20th century.
Fujino, D. C. & Rodriguez, R. M. (2022). Contemporary Asian American Activism : Building Movements for Liberation. University of Washington Press. In the struggles for prison abolition, global anti-imperialism, immigrant rights, affordable housing, environmental justice, fair labor, and more, twenty-first-century Asian American activists are speaking out and standing up to systems of oppression. Creating emancipatory futures requires collective action and reciprocal relationships that are nurtured over time and forged through cross-racial solidarity and intergenerational connections, leading to a range of on-the-ground experiences.Bringing together grassroots organizers and scholar-activists, Contemporary Asian American Activism presents lived experiences of the fight for transformative justice and offers lessons to ensure the longevity and sustainability of organizing. In the face of imperialism, white supremacy, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and more, the contributors celebrate victories and assess failures, reflect on the trials of activist life, critically examine long-term movement building, and inspire continued mobilization for coming generations.
Govan, I. & Smith, T. (2021). What’s Up with White Women? : Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege in Pursuit of Racial Justice. New Society Publishers. As a white woman, ask yourself: are you upholding or fighting racism? What's Up with White Women? is a practical guide for white women who are interested in becoming more effective in their cross-cultural, anti-racist practices. Blending real-life stories, theory, and anti-racism practices from decades of on-the-ground work, the authors invite white women to understand their gendered role in systemic racism and their unique opportunity for action. Both frank and compassionate, coverage includes: Stories of white women's experiences with sexism, racism, and white privilege How white women harm BIPOC and ourselves by colluding with systems of oppression Why and how white women often hijack race conversations A powerful six-stage identity development model for self-reflection and growth Guiding questions and practical actions for strengthening anti-racism practices Tools to cultivate genuine partnerships with BIPOC individuals and groups. White women are positioned in a power hierarchy between white men and BIPOC. It is time for white women to step up and undertake deep reflection on their role in systemic racism and take concrete actions that support equity and justice for all people.
Gómez, L. E. (2022). Inventing Latinos : A New Story of American Racism. The New Press. An NPR Best Book of the Year, exploring the impact of Latinos'new collective racial identity on the way Americans understand race, with a new afterword by the author Who are Latinos and where do they fit in America's racial order? In this “timely and important examination of Latinx identity” (Ms.), Laura E. Gómez, a leading critical race scholar, argues that it is only recently that Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and others are seeing themselves (and being seen by others) under the banner of a cohesive racial identity. And the catalyst for this emergent identity, she argues, has been the ferocity of anti-Latino racism. In what Booklist calls “an incisive study of history, complex interrogation of racial construction, and sophisticated legal argument,” Gómez “packs a knockout punch” (Publishers Weekly), illuminating for readers the fascinating race-making, unmaking, and re-making processes that Latinos have undergone over time, indelibly changing the way race functions in this country. Building on the “insightful and well-researched” (Kirkus Reviews) material of the original, the paperback features a new afterword in which the author analyzes results of the 2020 Census, providing brilliant, timely insight about how Latinos have come to self-identify.
Harvey, J. (2017). Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America. Abingdon Press. This New York Times best-selling book is a guide for families, educators, and communities to raise their children to be able and active anti-racist allies.With a foreword by Tim Wise, Raising White Kids is for families, churches, educators, and communities who want to equip their children to be active and able participants in a society that is becoming one of the most racially diverse in the world while remaining full of racial tensions. For white people who are committed to equity and justice, living in a nation that remains racially unjust and deeply segregated creates unique conundrums.These conundrums begin early in life and impact the racial development of white children in powerful ways. What can we do within our homes, communities and schools? Should we teach our children to be “colorblind”? Or, should we teach them to notice race? What roles do we want to equip them to play in addressing racism when they encounter it? What strategies will help our children learn to function well in a diverse nation?Talking about race means naming the reality of white privilege and hierarchy. How do we talk about race honestly, then, without making our children feel bad about being white? Most importantly, how do we do any of this in age-appropriate ways?While a great deal of public discussion exists in regard to the impact of race and racism on children of color, meaningful dialogue about and resources for understanding the impact of race on white children are woefully absent. Raising White Kids steps into that void.'Most white Americans didn't get from our own families the concrete teaching and modeling we needed to be active in the work of racial justice ourselves, let alone to feel equipped now to talk about race with and teach anti-racism to our children. There is so much we need to learn and it's urgent that we do so. But the good news is: we can,'says Jennifer Harvey.
Hong, C. P. (2020). Minor Feelings : An Asian American Reckoning. One World. Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative—and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world. Binding these essays together is Hong's theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame, suspicion, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality—when you believe the lies you're told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small, they're dissonant—and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. With sly humor and a poet's searching mind, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language, to shame and depression, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche—and of a writer's search to both uncover and speak the truth.
Johnson, F. L. & Fine, M. G. (2021). Let’s Talk Race : A Guide for White People. New Society Publishers. Real conversations about racism need to start nowLet's Talk Race confronts why white people struggle to talk about race, why we need to own this problem, and how we can learn to do the work ourselves and stop expecting Black people to do it for us.Written by two specialists in race relations and parents of two adopted African American sons, the book provides unique insights and practical guidance, richly illustrated with personal examples, anecdotes, research findings, and prompts for personal reflection and conversations about race.Coverage includes:Seeing the varied forms of racismHow we normalize and privilege whitenessEssential and often unknown elements of Black history that inform the presentRacial disparities in education, health, criminal justice, and wealthUnderstanding racially-linked cultural differencesHow to find conversational partners and create safe spaces for conversationsConversational do's and don'ts.Let's Talk Race is for all white people who want to face the challenges of talking about race and working towards justice and equity.
Jones, D. & Hagopian, J. (2020). Black Lives Matter at School : An Uprising for Educational Justice. Haymarket Books. This inspiring collection of accounts from educators and students is “an essential resource for all those seeking to build an antiracist school system” (Ibram X. Kendi).Since 2016, the Black Lives Matter at School movement has carved a new path for racial justice in education. A growing coalition of educators, students, parents and others have established an annual week of action during the first week of February. This anthology shares vital lessons that have been learned through this important work.In this volume, Bettina Love makes a powerful case for abolitionist teaching, Brian Jones looks at the historical context of the ongoing struggle for racial justice in education, and prominent teacher union leaders discuss the importance of anti-racism in their unions. Black Lives Matter at School includes essays, interviews, poems, resolutions, and more from participants across the country who have been building the movement on the ground.
Kara, B. & Wilson, H. (2022). Diverse Educators : A Manifesto. University of Buckingham Press. Structured around the Equality Act and written collaboratively, Diverse Educators: A Manifesto aims to capture the collective voice of the teaching community and to showcase the diverse lived experiences of educators.The book is divided into ten chapters, one for each of the nine Protected Characteristics (Age; Disability; Gender Reassignment; Pregnancy and Maternity; Marriage and Civil Partnership; Race; Religion and Belief; Sex; Sexual Orientation) with a tenth chapter exploring intersectionality.Framed in theory and interweaving personal and professional narrative from over 100 contributors, this ground-breaking text responds to current and historic debates, while remaining accessible and solutions-focused, with high-quality input on practice, pedagogy, people management and policy.Each chapter shares provocations for the reader and for the school system on the changes we would collectively like to manifest in education.
Kay, M. R. (2018). Not Light, but Fire : How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom. Stenhouse Publishers. Do you know how to initiate and facilitate productive dialogues about race in your classroom? Are you prepared to handle complex topics while keeping your students engaged?Inspired by Frederick Douglass's abolitionist call to action, “it is not light that is needed, but fire”, author Matthew Kay demonstrates how to move beyond surface-level discussions and lead students through the most difficult race conversations. In Not Light, But Fire: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Classroom, Kay recognizes we often never graduate to the harder conversations, so he offers a method for getting them right, providing candid guidance on:How to recognize the difference between meaningful and inconsequential race conversations.How to build conversational “safe spaces,” not merely declare them.How to infuse race conversations with urgency and purpose.How to thrive in the face of unexpected challenges.How administrators might equip teachers to thoughtfully engage in these conversations. With the right blend of reflection and humility, Kay asserts teachers can make school one of the best venues for young people to discuss race.
Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to Be an Antiracist. One World. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.
Kernahan, C. (2019). Teaching About Race and Racism in the College Classroom : Notes From a White Professor: Vol. First edition. West Virginia University Press. Teaching about race and racism can be a difficult business. Students and instructors alike often struggle with strong emotions, and many people have robust preexisting beliefs about race. At the same time, this is a moment that demands a clear understanding of racism. It is important for students to learn how we got here and how racism is more than just individual acts of meanness. Students also need to understand that colorblindness is not an effective anti-racism strategy. In this book, Cyndi Kernahan argues that you can be honest and unflinching in your teaching about racism while also providing a compassionate learning environment that allows for mistakes and avoids shaming students. She provides evidence for how learning works with respect to race and racism along with practical teaching strategies rooted in that evidence to help instructors feel more confident. She also differentiates between how white students and students of color are likely to experience the classroom, helping instructors provide a more effective learning experience for all students.
Love, B. L. (2019). We Want to Do More Than Survive : Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom. Beacon Press. Drawing on personal stories, research, and historical events, an esteemed educator offers a vision of educational justice inspired by the rebellious spirit and methods of abolitionists.Drawing on her life's work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex.To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice.
McBride, D. (2018). Caring for Equality : A History of African American Health and Healthcare. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. African Americans today continue to suffer disproportionately from heart disease, diabetes, and other health problems. In Caring for Equality David McBride chronicles the struggle by African Americans and their white allies to improve poor black health conditions as well as inadequate medical care—caused by slavery, racism, and discrimination—since the arrival of African slaves in America. Black American health progress resulted from the steady influence of what David McBride calls the health equality ideal: the principle that health of black Americans could and should be equal to that of whites and other Americans. Including a timeline, selected primary sources, and an extensive bibliographic essay, McBride's book provides a superb starting point for students and readers who want to explore in greater depth this important and understudied topic in African American history.
Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression : How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. NYU Press. A revealing look at how negative biases against women of color are embedded in search engine results and algorithms Run a Google search for “black girls”—what will you find? “Big Booty” and other sexually explicit terms are likely to come up as top search terms. But, if you type in “white girls,” the results are radically different. The suggested porn sites and un-moderated discussions about “why black women are so sassy” or “why black women are so angry” presents a disturbing portrait of black womanhood in modern society.In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities. Data discrimination is a real social problem; Noble argues that the combination of private interests in promoting certain sites, along with the monopoly status of a relatively small number of Internet search engines, leads to a biased set of search algorithms that privilege whiteness and discriminate against people of color, specifically women of color.Through an analysis of textual and media searches as well as extensive research on paid online advertising, Noble exposes a culture of racism and sexism in the way discoverability is created online. As search engines and their related companies grow in importance—operating as a source for email, a major vehicle for primary and secondary school learning, and beyond—understanding and reversing these disquieting trends and discriminatory practices is of utmost importance.An original, surprising and, at times, disturbing account of bias on the internet, Algorithms of Oppression contributes to our understanding of how racism is created, maintained, and disseminated in the 21st century.
Oluo, I. (2019). So You Want to Talk About Race: Vol. First Trade Paperback Edition, September 2019. Seal Press. Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in AmericaProtests against racial injustice and white supremacy have galvanized millions around the world. The stakes for transformative conversations about race could not be higher. Still, the task ahead seems daunting, and it's hard to know where to start. How do you tell your boss her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law hang up on you when you had questions about police reform? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from police brutality and cultural appropriation to the model minority myth in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race, and about how racism infects every aspect of American life.
Orejuela, F. & Shonekan, S. (2018). Black Lives Matter and Music : Protest, Intervention, Reflection. Indiana University Press. Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar's'Alright,'J. Cole's'Be Free,'D'Angelo and the Vanguard's'The Charade,'The Game's'Don't Shoot,'Janelle Monae's'Hell You Talmbout,'Usher's'Chains,'and many others serving as unofficial anthems and soundtracks for members and allies of the movement. In this collection of critical studies, contributors draw from ethnographic research and personal encounters to illustrate how scholarly research of, approaches to, and teaching about the role of music in the Black Lives Matter movement can contribute to public awareness of the social, economic, political, scientific, and other forms of injustices in our society. Each chapter in Black Lives Matter and Music focuses on a particular case study, with the goal to inspire and facilitate productive dialogues among scholars, students, and the communities we study. From nuanced snapshots of how African American musical genres have flourished in different cities and the role of these genres in local activism, to explorations of musical pedagogy on the American college campus, readers will be challenged to think of how activism and social justice work might appear in American higher education and in academic research. Black Lives Matter and Music provokes us to examine how we teach, how we conduct research, and ultimately, how we should think about the ways that black struggle, liberation, and identity have evolved in the United States and around the world.
Ramos, P. (2020). Finding Latinx : In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity. Vintage. Latinos across the United States are redefining identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many—Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns—are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been represented. No longer. In this empowering cross-country travelogue, journalist and activist Paola Ramos embarks on a journey to find the communities of people defining the controversial term, “Latinx.” She introduces us to the indigenous Oaxacans who rebuilt the main street in a post-industrial town in upstate New York, the “Las Poderosas” who fight for reproductive rights in Texas, the musicians in Milwaukee whose beats reassure others of their belonging, as well as drag queens, environmental activists, farmworkers, and the migrants detained at our border. Drawing on intensive field research as well as her own personal story, Ramos chronicles how “Latinx” has given rise to a sense of collectivity and solidarity among Latinos unseen in this country for decades.A vital and inspiring work of reportage, Finding Latinx calls on all of us to expand our understanding of what it means to be Latino and what it means to be American. The first step towards change, writes Ramos, is for us to recognize who we are.
Saad, L. F. (2020). Me and white supremacy : combat racism, change the world, and become a good ancestor. Sourcebooks. "When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #meandwhitesupremacy, she never predicted it would spread as widely as it did. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and nearly 100,000 people downloaded the Me and White Supremacy Workbook. Updated and expanded from the original workbook, Me and White Supremacy, takes the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources. Awareness leads to action, and action leads to change. The numbers show that readers are ready to do this work--let's give it to them."-
Singleton, G. E. (2021). Courageous Conversations about Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools and Beyond. Updated. Third Edition. Corwin. Deepen the dialogue to address racial disparities in your organization Schools, like all organizations, face a nearly insurmountable hurdle when addressing racial inequities--the inability to talk candidly about race. In this timely update, author Glenn Singleton enables you to break the silence and open an authentic dialogue that forges a path to progress for racial equity. The third edition offers new coverage of the structural inequities in schools and society that have been exposed by the pandemic as well as heightened public awareness of racial injustice. Courageous Conversations about Race allows you to deepen your personal understanding of race and its impact on all students. You will discover how to apply the strategy and protocol to Embrace the four agreements--stay engaged, speak your truth, experience discomfort and accept non-closure--to deepen interracial dialogue Build a foundation for advancing equity using the Six Conditions of Courageous Conversation Examine the role of race in your life using the Courageous Conversation Compass to understand and guide your actions Expand your capacity to lead others on the journey in addressing institutional racism disparities This guide empowers you with practical tools and insights to successfully challenge racist policies and practice in schools and beyond. It is your call to leadership--one that will impact student achievement and drive systemic transformation.
Solomon, A. & Rankin, K. (2019). How We Fight White Supremacy : A Field Guide to Black Resistance. Bold Type Books. This celebration of Black resistance, from protests to art to sermons to joy, offers a blueprint for the fight for freedom and justice -- and ideas for how each of us can contribute Many of us are facing unprecedented attacks on our democracy, our privacy, and our hard-won civil rights. If you're Black in the US, this is not new. As Colorlines editors Akiba Solomon and Kenrya Rankin show, Black Americans subvert and resist life-threatening forces as a matter of course. In these pages, leading organizers, artists, journalists, comedians, and filmmakers offer wisdom on how they fight White supremacy. It's a must-read for anyone new to resistance work, and for the next generation of leaders building a better future.
Taylor, K. (2019). Race for Profit : How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership. The University of North Carolina Press. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally. The disaster that ensued revealed that racist exclusion had not been eradicated, but rather transmuted into a new phenomenon of predatory inclusion.Race for Profit uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned. The same racist structures and individuals remained intact after redlining's end, and close relationships between regulators and the industry created incentives to ignore improprieties. Meanwhile, new policies meant to encourage low-income homeownership created new methods to exploit Black homeowners. The federal government guaranteed urban mortgages in an attempt to overcome resistance to lending to Black buyers – as if unprofitability, rather than racism, was the cause of housing segregation. Bankers, investors, and real estate agents took advantage of the perverse incentives, targeting the Black women most likely to fail to keep up their home payments and slip into foreclosure, multiplying their profits. As a result, by the end of the 1970s, the nation's first programs to encourage Black homeownership ended with tens of thousands of foreclosures in Black communities across the country. The push to uplift Black homeownership had descended into a goldmine for realtors and mortgage lenders, and a ready-made cudgel for the champions of deregulation to wield against government intervention of any kind.Narrating the story of a sea-change in housing policy and its dire impact on African Americans, Race for Profit reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.

Additional Recommended Titles

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

Democracy in Black by Eddie S. Glaude

My Grandmother's Hands by Resmaa Menakem

Race Lessons by Prentice T. Chandler

Racism Without Racists by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Tears We Cannot Stop by Michael Eric Dyson

Uprooting Racism - 4th Edition by Paul Kivel

White Rage by Carol Anderson

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood... and the Rest of y'all Too by Christopher Emdin

Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching by Mychal Denzel Smith

Policing the Planet by Jordan T. Camp (Editor); Christina Heatherton (Editor)

Pushout by Monique Morris; Mankaprr Conteh (Foreword by); Melissa Harris-Perry (Foreword by)

The Social Life of DNA by Alondra Nelson

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

They Can't Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery

From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies by Asao B. Inoue

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America by Manning Marable; Leith Mullings (Foreword by)

The Making of Asian America by Erika Lee

White Allies in the Struggle for Racial Justice by Dick Boyd

Citizen by Claudia Rankine

Dog Whistle Politics by Ian Haney López

Educated in Whiteness by Angelina E. Castagno

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Myth of the Model Minority by Joe R. Feagin; Rosalind S. Chou

Racist America by Joe R. Feagin

This Is Not a Test by José Vilson; Karen Lewis (Foreword by); Pedro Noguera (Afterword by)

Waking up White by Debby Irving

The Color of Success by Ellen D. Wu

Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask by Anton Treuer

The Invention of the White Race by Theodore W. Allen

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy DeGruy

Body and Soul by Alondra Nelson

Fatal Invention by Dorothy Roberts

Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez

Malcolm X by Manning Marable

Seeing White by Jean Halley; Amy Eshleman; Ramya Mahadevan Vijaya

White Privilege by Paula S. Rothenberg

Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity by Tim Wise

The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter

Start Where You Are, but Don't Stay There by H. Richard Milner

The Warmth of Other Suns : The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

Habits of Whiteness by Terrance MacMullan

How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? by Moustafa Bayoumi

A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki

Everyday Antiracism by Mica Pollock (Editor)

How Race Survived U.S. History by David R. Roediger

How the Irish Became White by Noel Ignatiev

Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington

White Like Me by Tim Wise

Sundown Towns by James W. Loewen

When Affirmative Action Was White by Ira Katznelson

White by Law by Ian Haney Lopez

The Heart of Whiteness by Robert Jensen

We Are All Suspects Now by Tram Nguyen; Edwidge Danticat (Foreword by)

Indigenizing the Academy by Devon A. Mihesuah (Editor); Angela Cavender Wilson (Editor)

What Makes Racial Diversity Work in Higher Education by William E. Kirwan (Foreword by); Frank W. Hale Jr. (Editor)

Race Matters by Cornel West

White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

Yellow by Frank H. Wu

Race, Police, and the Making of a Political Identity by Edward J. Escobar

The Wages of Whiteness by David R. Roediger; Mike Davis (Contribution by); Michael Sprinker (Contribution by)

The Possessive Investment in Whiteness by George Lipsitz

Strangers from a Different Shore by Ronald Takaki

The Racial Contract by Charles Mills

Black Power by Charles V. Hamilton; Kwame Ture

Stand the Storm by Edward Reynolds

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

Articles & Essays

AFL-CIO. (n.d.). Bayard Rustin: Trade union and civil rights organizer and activist. Social Welfare History Project. Bayard Rustin served the trade union and civil rights movements as a brilliant theorist, tactician and organizer. He conceived the coalition of liberal, labor and religious leaders who supported passage of the civil rights and anti-poverty legislation of the 1960s and, as the first executive director of the AFL-CIO’s A. Philip Randolph Institute, he worked closely with the labor movement to ensure African American workers’ rightful place in the House of Labor.
Alvarez, B. (2021, September 21). Teaching with an Anti-Racist Lens. NEAToday. KEY TAKEAWAYS For many educators, teaching through an anti-racist lens means helping students understand racism’s origins and guises, past and present, so they can act to disrupt White supremacy. Despite a push by certain parent groups and lawmakers to prevent educators from teaching about systemic racism and sexism, educators are committed to teach the truth. NEA offers several resources and trainings on how to teach anti-racist curriculum.
Anderson, E. (2015). “The White Space.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 1(1), 10 –21. Since the end of the Civil Rights Movement, large numbers of black people have made their way into settings previously occupied only by whites, though their reception has been mixed. Overwhelmingly white neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, restaurants, and other public spaces remain. Blacks perceive such settings as “the white space,” which they often consider to be informally “off limits” for people like them. Meanwhile, despite the growth of an enormous black middle class, many whites assume that the natural black space is that destitute and fearsome locality so commonly featured in the public media, including popular books, music and videos, and the TV news—the iconic ghetto. White people typically avoid black space, but black people are required to navigate the white space as a condition of their existence.
Ariel, C. (2017, August 16). For our white friends desiring to be allies. Sojourners. Author's Note: I'm writing this in hopes that it can be used to lighten the load of marginalized folks, keeping in mind that not all marginalized people want to engage in the ally conversation, and that is perfect as well. For those who do, my prayer is that when someone asks you the question, “how can I be a stronger ally?” you might choose to save your breath/energy and send this in its place. I have been asked by two dear friends, “how can I be a stronger ally?” Being the slow emotional processor that I am, I wanted to spend some time with this before I answered them. I surely appreciate and love these two individuals, and I appreciate their vulnerability in asking me this question. I am not going to do much coddling here; I don’t know that I believe that love requires coddling. Here are six things you can do to be stronger allies.
Balthaser, B. (2016, July 13). Racial Violence in Black and White. Boston Review. From W. E. B. Du Bois’s publication of lynching photographs to Black Lives Matter’s circulation of videos of police brutality against African Americans, there is a radical heritage of using images of violence as instruments of critique.
Benjamin, P. (2020, June 21). Dear White People: If you have ever said any of these things then you are part of the problem. Milwaukee Independent. My dear white friends, I’m about to lay some hardcore truth on you right now. Many of you are the problem. Yes, you read that right. Many of you are the reason why these riots are happening. Many of you are the reason why it has come to this. This is especially true if you’ve ever, and especially in the last weeks, said any of the following: ...
Bensimon, E. M. (2018, October 16). Reclaiming Racial Justice in Equity, Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning, 50(3-4), 95-98. Reclaiming Racial Justice in Equity. Estela Mara Bensimon is Dean's Professor in Educational Equity and Founding Director of the Center for Urban Education. In 2017, she was elected to the National Academy of Education and presented with the 2017 Social Justice in Education Award by the American Education Research Association (AERA); she is the 2018 AERA Division J Research Award recipient. Her opinion pieces have been published in Inside Higher Education, Denver Post, Sacramento Bee, and Zocalo. In January 2018, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Dr. Bensimon to the Education Commission of the States.
Biss, E. (2015, December 2). White Debt. The New York Times. Reckoning with what is owed — and what can never be repaid — for racial privilege.
Blow, C. M. (2020, June 7). Allies, Don’t Fail Us Again. The New York Times. Many white people have been moved by the current movement, but how will they respond when true equality threatens their privilege?
Boutte, G. S. & Jackson, T. O. (2013). Advice to White allies: insights from faculty of Color. Race, Ethnicity and Education. University of South Carolina. This article interweaves discussions of successes and tensions surrounding cross-racial collaborative social justice efforts in teacher education. It addresses frustrations that often occur for faculty of Color when working with White allies in P-12 settings and schools of education at Predominantly White Institutions. Advice is offered with the larger goal of helping White allies think about ways to shift the gaze from educators’ politics to the wellbeing of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Suggestions for how White allies can better support faculty of Color are presented.
Bracey, J. (n.d.). How Racism Harms White Americans. [Transcript]. Media Education Foundation. A couple things. This talk used to be a fairly complicated talk because I had to explain to white people why they suffered from racism. Well, after three and a half years of the Obama regime, you can see what I'm talking about. There's a significant portion of white people in this country that will let the country go off a cliff rather than let a black person save them. Right? And they don’t mind saying that. They don't hide it. It's not closet racism. It's straight-up, old-fashioned racism. And it's costing everybody. What I want to talk about is where did those ideas come from? How did they get here? How are they so entrenched that even 200 years after the American Revolution, we still have people that cannot see the world except in racial terms. That don't understand what this country is in terms of white privilege and patriarchal privilege and so I'm going to work your way through that.
Brazas, C. & McGeehan, C. (2020, Spring). What White Colleagues Need to Understand. Learning for Justice (64). White supremacy doesn’t stop at the teachers’ lounge door.
Brown, Y. (2015, August 14). The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy. Medium. Polite White Supremacy is the notion that whites should remain the ruling class while denying that they are the ruling class, politely. Affectionately, it’s called #PWS for short. It has been referred to as the Casual American Caste System, Delicate Apartheid, Gentle Oppression, or what I like to call it after a few drinks: Chad Crow, the super chill grandson of Jim Crow. No but seriously, Polite White Supremacy is very real. So why is it that we must specifically say ‘Polite White Supremacy’ rather than Racism? We must say Polite White Supremacy for three reasons. First, saying #PWS puts the responsibility solely on the creators of a systemic problem. Second, this phrase addresses the subtlety and casualness with which oppression is administered. Thirdly, it eradicates the all-too-common confusion between racism and prejudice. It’s important to eradicate this confusion so it can be clear that racism is tied to a power structure and access to resources.
Cargle, R. E. (2019, November 21). How to Talk to Your Family About Racism on Thanksgiving. Harper's Bazaar. "As America sits down to give thanks for a country founded on the pain of many, we can't dismiss the irony of what is being celebrated."
Coates, T. (2014, June). The Case for Reparations. The Atlantic. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
Cobb, J. (2020, May 27). The Death of George Floyd, In Context. The New Yorker. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
Collins, C. (2018, Fall). What Is White Privilege, Really? Learning for Justice, 60. Recognizing white privilege begins with truly understanding the term itself. Click the "more" link below to access the Toolkit for "What Is White Privilege, Really?" This toolkit offers advice, activities and further reading suggestions for educators who want to unpack the concept of whiteness and white privilege with themselves and with students.
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Toolkit: https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/fall-2018/toolkit-for-what-is-white-privilege-really
DiAngelo, R. (2011). White Fragility. The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3). University of North Carolina Greensboro. White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress. This insulated environment of racial protection builds white expectations for racial comfort while at the same time lowering the ability to tolerate racial stress, leading to what I refer to as White Fragility. White Fragility is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium. This paper explicates the dynamics of White Fragility.
Diaz, R. (2020, January 22). Moving on from Diversity Work. Office of Community College Research and Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "If institutions protect whiteness, then it is easy for diversity work to be symbolic."
Felber, G. (2016, August 30). Black Nationalism and Liberation: Integration doesn’t guarantee equality or freedom. Boston Review. Black Nationalism and Liberation Integration doesn’t guarantee equality or freedom.
Franklin, J. (2016). Racial Microaggressions, Racial Battle Fatigue, and Racism-Related Stress in Higher Education. NYU Journal of Student Affairs, pp. 44-55. The college experiences of students of color today are described as distinct from their White peers due to racial microaggressions. Recently, higher education research has begun to describe racial microaggressions, but scholars often do not take the next step to investigate the impact of racial microaggressions on health and academics. This literature review highlights the differences among racial microaggressions, racial battle fatigue, racism-related stress and racial trauma through theoretical and empirical studies. The paper argues that institutions, practitioners, researchers, and higher education leaders can address racial microaggressions and racial battle fatigue to make their campuses more equitable.
Gamio Cuervo, A. B. (2016, Summer). Latinx: A Brief Handbook. Princeton LGBT Center. Princeton LGBT Center Online Resource -- adopted by LGBT+ and cultural organizations nationally.
Goodwin, M. T. (2018, December 7). Racial Battle Fatigue: What is it and What are the Symptoms? Medium. Defining racial battle fatigue, what causes it, and what are the symptoms.
Gorski, P. (2019, April). Avoiding Racial Equity Detours. Educational Leadership, 56-61. Students experiencing racism can’t wait for schools to move at their own pace and comfort level.
Greater Good. (2020, June 3). Anti-Racist Resources from Greater Good. The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. In response to the killing of unarmed Black people by police, we gathered Greater Good pieces that explore our potential to reduce prejudice in society and in ourselves.
The Guardian & American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center. (2018-2019) Antiracism and America. The Guardian. A collaboration between The Guardian and American University’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center, this is an ongoing series that sheds light on the structures at the root of racial inequities. Includes: Moss, M. Trauma lives on in Native Americans by making us sick – while the US looks away -- Pérez, M. Z. The Danger of Being Pregnant and Black in America. -- García, M. The border wall isn't just a dividing line – it's a monument against racial progress. -- To end racial disparities in policing, we must look beyond the data. -- Queens of the kitchen: women hold power until the space becomes a business. -- Chung, N. Stories of transracial adoptees must be heard – even uncomfortable ones. -- Oluo, I. Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people. -- Díaz, J. The school-to-prison pipeline is getting worse for black and brown girls. -- Jenkins, M. Bones that revealed a Texas town's forgotten racial past deserve respect. -- Petrella, C. Anand Giridharadas: 'What wealthy people do is rig the discourse'. -- Are we racist? A family's conversation, illustrated. – Bayoumi, M. I'm a brown Arab-American, and the US census refuses to recognize me. -- Activist and ex-prisoner Eddy Zheng: 'How do we humanize each other?'. -- Perry, I. Voter suppression carries slavery's three-fifths clause into the present. – Taylor, K-Y. Housing market racism persists despite ‘fair housing’ laws. – diAngelo, Robin. White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. It's not. – Janmohamed, Z. The divisiveness that permeates Detroit's communities of color. – Kaba, M. Black women punished for self-defense must be freed from their cages. – Milman, O. Robert Bullard: ‘Environmental justice isn’t just slang, it’s real’. – Johnson, J. N. Facing Charlottesville's savage, racist history has the power to save us. – Jackson, J. I went to prison for 19 years. Here is why I didn't become a statistic. -- About Antiracism & America - a Guardian series. -- What led Chicago to shutter dozens of majority-black schools? Racism. – Kendi, I. X. This is what an antiracist America would look like. How do we get there?
Harmon, A. (2019, February 18). For a Black Mathematician, What It’s Like to Be the ‘Only One’. The New York Times. Fewer than 1 percent of doctorates in math are awarded to African-Americans. Edray Goins, who earned one of them, found the upper reaches of the math world a challenging place.
Harper, F. K., Maher, E. M., & Jung, H. (2021). Whiteness as a Stumbling Block in Learning to Teach Mathematics for Social Justice. Investigations in Mathematics Learning, 13(1), 5–17. Using mathematics as a tool to interrogate (in)justice and take action toward a more socially just world in PreK-12 mathematics shows promise for disrupting marginalization of Black and Brown students. Teachers, however, work within broader systems, structures, and discourses that shape their decisions and actions. Consequently, they likely feel imbalance, and attempts to manage tensions may inadvertently perpetuate whiteness -- the ideologies that value the white racial group over others. To explore this phenomenon, we asked: How do white teachers learning to teach mathematics for social justice disrupt whiteness in mathematics education, and how do they perpetuate whiteness? We examined two newly practicing teachers' social justice mathematics lesson planning, enactment, and reflection through a framework for the operation of whiteness in mathematics education. Findings provide insights into the perpetuation and disruption of whiteness in the institutional and labor dimensions of mathematics teaching and learning as teachers sought to balance mathematics and social justice goals and connect to Black and Brown students' experiences. We discuss implications for the continued learning of social justice teaching and the development of resources to support disruption of whiteness in mathematics education.
Harris, C. I. (1993, June). Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review, 102(8), 1710-1791. RACE AND THE LAW Whiteness as Property Article by Cheryl I. Harris JUN 10, 1993 In the lead up to Volume 134, the Harvard Law Review republished five classic Critical Race Theory articles from our archives. This is the first piece in our series. The full version of this Article may be found by clicking on the PDF link below. Issues regarding race and racial identity as well as questions pertaining to property rights and ownership have been prominent in much public discourse in the United States. In this article, Professor Harris contributes to this discussion by positing that racial identity and property are deeply interrelated concepts. Professor Harris examines how whiteness, initially constructed as a form of racial identity, evolved into a form of property, historically and presently acknowledged and protected in American law. Professor Harris traces the origins of whiteness as property in the parallel systems of domination of Black and Native American peoples out of which were created racially contingent forms of property and property rights. Following the period of slavery and conquest, whiteness became the basis of racialized privilege — a type of status in which white racial identity provided the basis for allocating societal benefits both private and public in character. These arrangements were ratified and legitimated in law as a type of status property. Even as legal segregation was overturned, whiteness as property continued to serve as a barrier to effective change as the system of racial classification operated to protect entrenched power. Next, Professor Harris examines how the concept of whiteness as property persists in current perceptions of racial identity, in the law’s misperception of group identity and in the Court’s reasoning and decisions in the arena of affirmative action. Professor Harris concludes by arguing that distortions in affirmative action doctrine can only be addressed by confronting and exposing the property interest in whiteness and by acknowledging the distributive justification and function of affirmative action as central to that task.
Haynes, C. & Bazner, K. J. (2019, 19 September). A message for faculty from the present-day movement for black lives. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 32(9), 1146-1161. The present-day movement for Black lives calls attention to the antiblackness that is supported and reinforced in White America. Antiblackness ostensibly contextualizes what it means to Learn While Black at predominantly White institutions. This article presents a content analysis of the demands that pertain to faculty and faculty work Black students submitted to institutional leaders in the aftermath of Ferguson and the campus rebellion led by Concerned Student 1950 at the University of Missouri. Study findings point to the classroom as a pedagogical site of Black Liberation; that is, interrogating Whiteness. This article concludes with recommendations to help faculty, especially White faculty, in interrogating whiteness and advancing Black Liberation in higher education.
Hidden Brain. (n.d.) Additional Resources [on Police and Black Americans]. Hidden Brain Media. Selected primary and secondary resources on the relationship between police and Black Americans.
Hobson, J. (2022, February 1). Tubman 200: Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project Explores the Meaning of Freedom Through One Extraordinary Life. Ms. Magazine. Two hundred years ago, a child was born into chattel slavery. She grew up to become a liberator. Abolitionist. Diviner. Healer. Nurse. Naturalist. Freedom fighter. Military raid leader. Spy. Scout. Suffragist. Daughter. Sister. Wife. Mother. Aunt. Friend. National Icon. This is the legacy of Harriet Tubman (1822-1913), born Araminta Ross, called Minty in her youth, and heralded as Moses in her extraordinary adult years of emancipatory action. ... Tubman, who was once described by biographer Milton C. Sernett as a “litmus test” for diversity and inclusion, is an apt historical symbol for our current age—perhaps best represented when she won a popularity contest to place an historic woman on U.S. currency back in 2015.
Hudson, P. J. (2016, March 14).The Racist Dawn of Capitalism. Boston Review. Unearthing the economy of bondage.
Jenkins, C., & Alfred, M. (2018). Understanding the motivation and transformation of White culturally responsive professors. Journal of Adult and Continuing Education, 24(1), 81–99. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy The purpose of this study was to examine the motivation for White professors in higher education to become culturally inclusive in their teaching practices and the transformational experiences that created this motivation and shaped their development. The findings revealed personal convictions that centred on moral obligations towards teaching was the primary motivation for the participants, that culturally responsive teaching requires complex consideration in its implementation, and there are a variety of challenges that impact culturally responsive professors. Above all, the participants believed in the moral rightness of their work and felt obligated to teach in a culturally responsive manner.
Jett, C. C. (2013). Culturally Responsive Collegiate Mathematics Education: Implications for African American Students. Interdisciplinary Journal of Teaching and Learning, 3(2), 102–116. In this article, the author utilizes the culturally congruent work of Gay (2010) and Ladson-Billings (2009) to highlight culturally responsive teaching as a viable option for African American students in higher education mathematics spaces. He offers translations of Gay and Ladson-Billings' work to Africana mathematics and argues that these practices increase access to rigorous culturally responsive mathematics and enact the brilliance that African American students bring to the mathematics space (Leonard & Martin, 2013). The author also challenges postsecondary educators to allow culturally responsive practices to shape their instructional practices. In addition, he shares future research directions for African American students in mathematics, preservice mathematics teachers, and mathematics professors.
Johnson, W. (2016, October 26). To Remake the World: Slavery, Racial Capitalism, and Justice. Boston Review. The idea that enslavement “dehumanized” enslaved people suggests that their humanity needs to be proven again and again. Much of the scholarship on slavery has relied upon a pat liberal notion of human rights as its moral paradigm. The version of human rights that dominates contemporary discourse is not significantly inflected by the history of slavery, although it would be better if it were. What if we use the history of slavery as a standpoint from which to rethink our notion of justice today?
Kazi, N. (2019). Troubling Islamophobia: Redefining the Conversation on Anti-Muslim Violence. Political Theology Network. Without a sustained focus on material inequalities and repressive state power, the conversation on Islamophobia too easily slips into a mealy-mouthed appeal to diversity and tolerance.
Kazi, N. (2020). Reform, Abolition, and Decoloniality: Framing Islamophobia. Political Theology, 21(5), 455–460. In article the author talks about the issues in anti-Islamophobia scholarship and activities which includes reform, and abolition. Topics include that books including "Radical Skin, Moderate Masks," "Islamophobia and Racism in America," and "Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics" that explore flaws both in academia, and representational Muslim politics and advocacy, and policy practices.
Kendi, I. X. (2020, June 1). The American Nightmare. The Atlantic. To be black and conscious of anti-black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
Kendi, I. X. (2020, May 12). Who Gets to Be Afraid in America? The Atlantic. Americans don’t see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road—they see their fear. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
Kim, M. M. (2019, November 10). Allyship (& Accomplice): The What, Why, and How. Medium. Allyship is an active and consistent practice of using power and privilege to achieve equity, inclusion, and justice while holding ourselves accountable to marginalized people’s needs.
Kim, M. M. (2020, May 8). 20+ Allyship Actions for Asians to Show Up for the Black Community Right Now. Medium. In light of #AhmaudArbery and ongoing police violence, how can the Asian and Asian American community show up for our Black siblings? Read this article in Korean, Chinese (simplified), Tamil, Malayalam (by The Social Understanding Initiative) or Japanese (by Michi Yoshikawa). Other Asian languages coming soon!
Kivel, P. (2002). The Costs of Racism to White People, [Reprinted from Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice]. Includes tool: Costs of Racism to White People Checklist. It can be hard for us to be honest with ourselves about the costs of racism in our own lives. The following is a checklist you can use to evaluate the costs of racism to white people.
Lebron, C. (2016, January 15). The Invisibility of Black Women. Boston Review. Black women go missing—from civil rights history and from our lives.
Love, B. L. (2021, January 12). How to Make Anti-Racism More Than a Performance. Education Week. Whether white people are ready or not, policies have to change.
Martinez-Cola, M. (2020). Collectors, Nightlights, and Allies, Oh My. Understanding and Dismantling Privilege, 10(1), 61-82. As more students of Color enter into Historically White Institutions (HWIs), the dearth of mentors of Color continues to be an issue leaving students to rely on White mentors within academia. Much of the literature regarding mentoring discusses its definitions and best practices. It does not, however, capture the experiences of students of Color and their perceptions of their White mentors. It also fails to challenge White mentors who other, tokenize, or fail to understand their mentees. Through autoethnography rooted in Critical Race Theory counternarratives, I identify, define, and discuss three roles White mentors play for students of Color.
Moosa, T. (2017, May 9). White People, It’s Time To Prioritize Justice Over Civility. The Establishment. In striving to be ‘civil,’ white moderates provide cover for deadly white supremacy.
The New Yorker. (2019, June 10). Ta-Nehisi Coates Revisits the Case for Reparations. The New Yorker. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy It’s not often that an article comes along that changes the world, but that’s exactly what happened with Ta-Nehisi Coates, five years ago, when he wrote “The Case for Reparations,” in The Atlantic. Reparations have been discussed since the end of the Civil War—in fact, there is a bill about reparations that’s been sitting in Congress for thirty years—but now reparations for slavery and legalized discrimination are a subject of major discussion among the Democratic Presidential candidates. In a conversation recorded for The New Yorker Radio Hour, David Remnick spoke with Coates… . Subjects of the conversation included what forms reparations might take, which Democratic candidates seem most serious about the topic, and how the issue looks in 2019, a political moment very different from when “The Case for Reparations” was written.
Okun, T. & dRworks. (2006). From White Racist to White Anti-Racist: the life-long journey. dismantlingracism.org. This article is meant to accompany the ladder of empowerment for white people, which is our attempt (referring to dRworks, an organization described below) to distinguish the different stages that white people go through as we develop awareness of our relationship to racism. This work draws on the thinking and experience of many people; those who have been directly quoted are listed at the end. The rest is the result of my exposure to the thinking and experience of many trainers and participants in the Dismantling Racism process, including dRworks colleagues, as well as friends and colleagues doing anti-racism work. Any usefulness found here should be credited to the larger community of anti-racism activists; any errors or flawed thinking is mine alone. The basic purpose of this article is to both help white people understand our identity as white people within a racist system which assumes our superiority and at the same time challenge that assumption and replace it with a positive, anti-racist identity. While many white people seem to think that one solution is to claim ‘colorblindness,’ both with regards to ourselves and to People of Color, we believe that it is absolutely critical to accept our identity as white people within a white group, understanding that this association profoundly affects the quality of our lives politically, economically, socially. We must then work, in the words of Beverly Daniel Tatum in her excellent book on racial identity development Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting in the Cafeteria Together (p. 94), “to feel good about it in the context of a commitment to a just society. This requires two tasks: the abandonment of individual racism and the recognition of and opposition to institutional and cultural racism.”
olsson, j. (2011). Detour-Spotting for white anti-racists. Cultural Bridges to Justice. For white people living in North America learning to be anti-racist is a re-education process. I must unlearn the thorough racist conditioning to re-educate and re-condition myself as an anti-racist. I need knowledge, guidance and experience to avoid the detours and traps waiting for me on this journey. There is little social or political encouragement for this journey of re-education. We are constantly tempted to change course by the racist propaganda of society and our own guilt and denial. In the face of society’s and our own resistance, sustaining the will to continue this journey takes bold and stubborn effort. This journey sends us into unfamiliar territory; we have never been here before. No white person has ever lived in a non-racist North America.) None of us has ever been taught the skills of anti-racist living. Indeed, we have been carefully taught the opposite: how to maintain our white privilege. Racism, the system (of oppression) and advantage (for white people) depends on the collusion and cooperation of white people for its perpetuation. ...
Oluo, I. (2019, April 15). Welcome To The Anti-Racism Movement — Here’s What You’ve Missed. The Establishment. A handy list of things that you’re going to need to catch up on. Buck up, because it won’t be easy. Are you still reeling in shock at the presidential election results? Are you pulling at your hair wondering, “How did this country get so racist??” Are you posting statuses about how it is now time to come together to fight racism in the face of current political threats? Have you found yourself saying, “Well, at least this administration is waking people up.” Hi! I see you there! Welcome to the anti-racism movement. I know you were kind of hoping to sneak in the back of class in the middle of this semester and then raise your hand in a few days to offer up expert opinion like you’ve always been here — but you’ve been spotted, and I have some homework for you, because you’ve missed A LOT and we don’t have the time to go over it all together. I’m glad you are here (I mean, I’d really rather you arrived sooner and I’m a little/lot resentful at how often we have to stop this class to cover all the material for people who are just now realizing that this is a class they should be taking, but better late than never I guess) and I know that once you catch up, you can contribute a lot to the work being done here.
Oluo, I. (2019, March 28). Confronting racism is not about the needs and feelings of white people. The Guardian. Too often whites at discussions on race decide for themselves what will be discussed, what they will hear, what they will learn.
Omadeke, J. (2021, June 15). Why the Model Minority Myth Is So Harmful. Harvard Business Review. Summary. In large, conservative industries, there’s historically been a trend of promoting a small percentage of minority professionals, who the organization then considers to be sufficient for equitable representation on their leadership teams. As a result, the one or two people of color who do make it into senior roles often have to overcompensate, or act as the “model minority.” There is huge pressure on their shoulders to assimilate in order to make themselves more palatable for their non-diverse team members, along with a fear that, if they don’t, their opportunity may be taken away.
Palmer, B. J. (2017, Spring). The Crossroads: Being Black, Immigrant, and Undocumented in the Era of #Blacklivesmatter. Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives, 9, 99. This paper discusses the detrimental, intersectional effects of immigration law and criminal law on Black immigrants, both with and without documentation. Anti-Black racism, deeply embedded in America's criminal law system, funnels Black immigrants into the criminal justice system, and subsequently into removal or other punitive immigration proceedings. Black immigrants have long been missing, or purposely erased, from the national immigration narrative. Only a handful of organizations advocate for their particularized needs. As Black immigrant activism increases in visibility, opportunities for a new form of coalition building--known as “transformational solidarity”--must be adopted in order to protect and advocate for Black immigrants.
Petrella, C. (2016, March 30). On Stone Mountain: White Supremacy and the Birth of the Modern Democratic Party. Boston Review. When the GOP won white voters by dog-whistling white supremacy, Democrats wooed them back with a renewed commitment to "mainstream America."
Phillips, H. (2020, May 9). Performative Allyship Is Deadly (Here’s What to Do Instead). Medium. Activism can’t begin and end with a hashtag.
Pitts, J. (2016, Fall). Silence speaks volumes. Our students are listening. Learning for Justice, 54. As educators we (sometimes unknowingly) step into roles of advocate, caretaker, guide, and even mother or father to students. Students pay attention to everything we say and do. They particularly pay attention to our silence. We may be uncomfortable talking about race, but we can no longer afford to be silent. We have chosen a profession, which—like parenting—requires that our comforts come second to those of children. Many black and brown students are educated in school systems and classrooms where they, despite making up the racial majority, are taught how to understand a world by a staff comprised of a powerful minority. When their teachers choose to remain silent about moments of racial tension or violence—violence that may well touch students’ own communities or families—these children are overtly reminded of their inferior place in society.
Racial Equity Tools. (2020). Core Concepts: Racism. Racial Equity Tools. Discussion of racism in terms of anti-blackness, and interpersonal, cultural, and institutional racism. Followed by a list of resources on each topic.
Rainey, et al. (2018). Race and gender differences in how sense of belonging influences decisions to major in STEM. International Journal of STEM Education, 5(10). Abstract Background: Women and students of color are widely underrepresented in most STEM fields. In order to investigate this underrepresentation, we interviewed 201 college seniors, primarily women and people of color, who either majored in STEM or started but dropped a STEM major. Here we discuss one section of the longer interview that focused on students’ sense of belonging, which has been found to be related to retention. In our analysis, we examine the intersections of race and gender with students’ sense of belonging, a topic largely absent from the current literature. Results: We found that white men were most likely to report a sense of belonging whereas women of color were the least likely. Further, we found that representation within one’s STEM sub-discipline, namely biology versus the physical sciences, impacts sense of belonging for women. Four key factors were found to contribute to sense of belonging for all students interviewed: interpersonal relationships, perceived competence, personal interest, and science identity. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that students who remain in STEM majors report a greater sense of belonging than those who leave STEM. Additionally, we found that students from underrepresented groups are less likely to feel they belong. These findings highlight structural and cultural features of universities, as well as STEM curricula and pedagogy, that continue to privilege white males. Keywords: Gender, Race, Belonging, Intersectional, Retention, Representation
ross, k. m. (2020, June 4). Call It What It Is: Anti-Blackness When black people are killed by the police, “racism” isn’t the right word. The New York Times. The word “racism” is everywhere. It’s used to explain all the things that cause African-Americans’ suffering and death: inadequate access to health care, food, housing and jobs, or a police bullet, baton or knee. But “racism” fails to fully capture what black people in this country are facing. The right term is “anti-blackness.” To be clear, “racism” isn’t a meaningless term. But it’s a catch-all that can encapsulate anything from black people being denied fair access to mortgage loans, to Asian students being burdened with a “model minority” label. It’s not specific. Many Americans, awakened by watching footage of Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck, are grappling with why we live in a world in which black death loops in a tragic screenplay, scored with the wails of childless mothers and the entitled indifference of our murderers. And an understanding of anti-blackness is the only place to start. Anti-blackness is one way some black scholars have articulated what it means to be marked as black in an anti-black world. It’s more than just “racism against black people.” That oversimplifies and defangs it. It’s a theoretical framework that illuminates society’s inability to recognize our humanity — the disdain, disregard and disgust for our existence.
Ruiz, V. L. (2006, December). Nuestra América: Latino History as United States History. The Journal of American History, 93(3): 655-672. Discusses the ways Mexican Americans, American Indians, and Euro-Americans could inhabit the same social spaces and thus complicate U.S. western narratives that privilege a binary relationship between Euro-Americans and a designated “other.”
Serwer, A. (2020, May 8).The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying. The pandemic has exposed the bitter terms of our racial contract, which deems certain lives of greater value than others. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
Sherover-Marcuse, R. (2020, June 19). Working Assumptions for White Activists on Eliminating Racism: Guidelines for Recruiting Other Whites as Allies. Films For Action. A list of guidelines for recruiting other Whites as allies.
Simmons, D. (2020, July 1). Why COVID-19 Is Our Equity Check. ASCD, 77(10). With students dispersed, schools and our society must confront long-simmering inequities.
Smith, C. W. (2020, August 18). Historically, White Americans Have Failed to See Racism as a Systemic Issue. Is That Changing? Yes! Magazine. After the civil rights movement, White people in the U.S. were still widely uncommitted to systemic solutions and policies to support racial equality. Although attitudes have shifted since, it’s not enough for transformative change.
Smith, W. A. (2008, January). Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue. In R. T. Schaefer (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society (pp.615-618). Sage Publications. Higher Education: Racial Battle Fatigue
Taylor, K-Y. (2020, May 29). Of Course There Are Protests. The State Is Failing Black People. The New York Times. The collapse of politics and governance leaves no other option.
Torres, C. (2019, August 14). The Urgent Need for Anti-Racist Education. Education Week. Christina Torres is an 8th grade English teacher at Punahou School in Honolulu, Hawaii. Previously, she has worked with Teach For America, Hope Street Group, the Center for Teaching Quality, and Teaching Tolerance. Find her online: Teach. Run. Write.
Viney, L-M. S. (2016., July 19). Here’s why it hurts when people say, “all lives matter”. Vanity Fair. A national youth advocate and educator explains why mattering means so much to black Americans. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
Washington, E. F., et al. (2020, July 3). When and How to Respond to Microaggressions. Harvard Business Review. Microagressions are defined as verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial slights and insults to the target person or group. For Black people, they are ubiquitous across daily work and life. You can respond in one of three ways: let it go, call it out immediately, bring it up at a later date. Here’s a framework for deciding which path is right for the situation and how to handle the conversation if you choose to have one. First, discern what matters to you. Second, disarm the person who committed the microaggression; explain that you want to have an uncomfortable conversation. Third, challenge them to clarify their statement or action, then focus them on the negative impact it had. Finally, decide how you want to let the incident affect you.
West End House. (2021, February). 30 Day Anti-Racism Challenge. westendhouse.org. Self-learning resources for White people. Click each day's links for learning opportunities.
Whites for Racial Equity. (n.d.). Resources on Whiteness, Minoritized Groups, Educational Equity, Anti-Racism. whitesforracialequality.org. Provides links to articles on the following categories: Cultural Appropriation Cultural Humility Implicit Bias White Allies White Fragility White Nationalists White Privilege White Resentment White Saviors White Supremacy White Teachers Whiteness Microaggressions White Identity Development Anti-Semitism Arab American Asian American Black History Black Lives Matter Civil Rights Era Farmworkers Immigration Indigenous People Islamophobia Latino, Latina, Latinx Slavery Critical Race Theory Educational Equity Ethnic Studies White Teachers Accountability Anti-Black Racism Anti-Racism Activities Colorism Environmental Racism Health Inequities Housing Disparities Justice System Labor/Employment Policing Race-Conscious Children Racial Trauma Racism Reparations Resisting Social Justice Structural Racism Taking Action Voting Rights Wealth Gap Work Place Inclusion
Wing, K. (2020, May 29). Teachers Must Hold Themselves Accountable for Dismantling Racial Oppression. ed post. OpEd: Teachers Must Hold Themselves Accountable for Dismantling Racial Oppression
Wise, T. (2020, June 29). Code of Ethics for White Anti-Racists. The Good Men Project. 10 suggestions for stronger solidarity.
Worth, S. (2020, February 19). The Language of Anti-Racism. Yes! Magazine. Excerpted from Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter by Candis Watts Smith and Tehama Lopez Bunyasi

Audiovisual Resources

Abolitionist Teaching Network. (2020-2021). ATN - Teaching To Thrive [Audio podcast series]. Captivate.fm Teaching to Thrive is a podcast committed to sharing ideas that strengthen the everyday lives of Black and Brown students within our schools and communities. Each episode is aimed at empowering our knowledge for collective liberation.
Acho, E. (2020). Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man [TV Series]. https://uncomfortableconvos.com/. Our Nation and world have again been confronted with its greatest ongoing pandemic, Racism. Racism is not a virus of the body; it is a virus of the mind, and unfortunately, it can be lethal. But you cannot fix a problem that you do not know you have. And if “ignorance is bliss”, in this case, bliss has caused bondage and pain for others. But there is a fix. We can all access the life-saving medicine that will cure the world’s most ailing, long-lasting pandemic. But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations. Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, is a safe place to have the uncomfortable conversations about race that many white people have never been able to have. But enough is enough- I want to remove the barriers for why we’ve never had these conversations. I want to provide a free space for curious white people to answer the questions they’ve always had but have been too nervous to ask. Like, “How can I have white privilege if I’m not wealthy?”, or “is racial profiling ok if black people tend to commit more crimes”, or my personal favorite from a 19-year-old girl from rural Alabama named Amy who asked, “if black people can say the ‘N’ word, why can’t I?” And many, many more. Many have thought these questions without realizing the key to mending the racial divide in our world lie within the answers, and that white people DO have the power to affect sweeping change, and short circuit racism within their own lives and communities. The cure for what ails us – all of us — lies within these, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man. Enjoy
Al Jazeera English. (2020, June 9). How can you be an ally to the Black Lives Matter movement? [Video]. Youtube. Mass protests in the US over the killing by police of George Floyd, have been swelled by the presence of people of all races in numbers not seen before. But whether it’s on the streets or online, what does true allyship look like? “You're walking down the street and you see a child and a big dog charging towards it. Do you let the dog eat the child or save the child?" writer and activist Feminista Jones told The Stream. "If you observe something, and you know something is going to happen, do you do everything you can to stop it, or do you think of self-preservation?" Activists say it’s vital that being an ally is an ongoing process of both education and action. Manuals on allyship are circulating on social media to help people take steps in that direction. Some of the suggestions are: educating yourself, researching, listening and not talking. Showing up at protests, observing and protecting people who are more vulnerable to police action. Donating to organisations on the frontline, centering and amplifying the voices of Black people.
Amanpour and Company. (2020, June 2). Bryan Stevenson: There’s a Direct Line From Lynching to George Floyd [Video]. Youtube. Addressing the root causes of racial injustice in America is fundamental to achieving lasting change. Bryan Stevenson has dedicated his life to doing just that. As a leading civil rights lawyer, Stevenson made his name saving dozens of wrongfully convicted inmates from execution through his Equal Justice Initiative. He speaks with Walter Isaacson about solutions, from a change in the culture of policing to an embrace of truth and reconciliation.
American Documentary, Inc. & the WORLD Channel. (2012-). America ReFramed [TV Series]. The WORLD Channel. America ReFramed brings to life compelling stories, personal voices and experiences that illuminate the contours of our ever-changing country. Since 2012, the series has premiered 170 films - more than half helmed by female makers and a third credited to BIPOC makers - centering stories of the LGBTQ community, people with disabilities, the formerly incarcerated, veterans, immigrants and more.
Anderson, J. & Thirteen Productions. (2017). The Talk: Race in America [Film]. PBS. AVON. The Talk – Race in America is a two-hour film about “the talk” that parents have with their children of color (primarily boys) to teach them how to act around the police in order to remain safe.
Ayers, H. & Warren, L. (2018). An Outrage [Film]. Learning for Justice. MUST CREATE FREE ACCOUNT TO STREAM For decades following the Civil War, racial terror reigned over the United States and, particularly, the American South, claiming thousands of lives and uprooting countless others. Lynching—at once extralegal and a systemic form of social control—left in its wake a pain that still lingers. That pain was first endured by brutalized black bodies, and then by the black communities it devastated and displaced. Those communities now face a different kind of violence: silence and erasure. Victims of lynching were forgotten in a graveyard overgrown with weeds planted by their tormentors. An Outrage, a film by Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren, joins the movement to right this wrong—not only to promote remembrance but also to illustrate how this recent history of injustice engenders further injustice today. Through the voices of scholars and activists in communities across the South, as well as through the descendants of the victims themselves, this film serves to educate viewers and call them to action. An Outrage takes viewers to the very communities where heinous acts of violence took place, offering a painful look back at lives lost to lynching and a critical look forward.
Bagwell, O. (1998). Africans in America [TV series]. WGBH Boston for PBS. America's journey through slavery is presented in four parts. For each era, you'll find a historical Narrative, a Resource Bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries, and a Teacher's Guide for using the content of the Web site and television series in U.S. history courses.
Becton, S. & Smith, K. (2021, June 29). How Do We Pursue Equity in Education? By Learning, Unlearning, and Muddling Through [Audio podcast]. School Library Journal. Discusses the importance of continuous, evolving work in order to "disrupt the systemic forces that continue to drive racial inequity in education."
Bennett, K. (2020, November 24). Allyship 101: Listening, Learning, and Loving Others in the Age of Black Lives Matter (S03, E08) [Audio podcast]. In Pod for the Cause. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Podcast: Allyship 101: Listening, Learning, and Loving Others in the Age of Black Lives Matter
Bennett, K. (2021, February 26). Black Justice is Our Justice (S04, E03) [Audio podcast]. In Pod for the Cause. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Podcast: Black Justice Is Our Justice
Bennett, K. (2021, November 5). Immigration and Race in America (S05, E03) [Audio podcast]. In Pod for the Cause. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. Podcast: Immigration and Race in America
Bennett, K. (2022-). Self Evident: Asian America's Stories [Audio podcast]. Self Evident Media. We tell Asian America’s stories to go beyond being seen. Join us in building the most impactful home for true stories that honor the everyday lives of Asian American people — and pass the mic for everyone to represent their whole self.
Bieber, J., et al. (2020). Asian Americans [TV Series]. PBS. Asian Americans is a five-hour film series that delivers a bold, fresh perspective on a history that matters today, more than ever. As America becomes more diverse, and more divided while facing unimaginable challenges, how do we move forward together? Told through intimate personal stories, the series will cast a new lens on U.S. history and the ongoing role that Asian Americans have played.
Biewen, J. (2017). Seeing White (Season 2) [Audio podcast]. In Scene On Radio Podcast. 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.
Bosch, A. (2013). Latino Americans [TV Series]. PBS. LATINO AMERICANS is a landmark three-part, six-hour documentary series that is set to air nationally on PBS in the fall of 2013. It is the first major documentary series for television to chronicle the rich and varied history and experiences of Latinos, who have helped shape the United States over the last 500-plus years and have become, with more than 50 million people, the largest minority group in the U.S.
Bradford, J. H. (2019-). Therapy for Black Girls [Audio podcast series]. therapyforblackgirls.com To be seen, to be heard, and to be understood. So often the stigma surrounding mental health issues and therapy prevents Black women from taking the step of seeing a therapist. This space was developed to present mental health topics in a way that feels more accessible and relevant.
Bratt, P. (2017). Dolores [Film]. AVON. Who is Dolores Huerta? One of the most important, yet least known activists of our time, Dolores Huerta was an equal partner in founding the first farm workers union with César Chávez. Tirelessly leading the fight for racial and labor justice, Huerta evolved into one of the most defiant feminists of the 20th century — and she continues the fight to this day, in her late 80s. With unprecedented access to this intensely private mother of 11, Peter Bratt’s film Dolores chronicles Huerta’s life from her childhood in Stockton, California to her early years with the United Farm Workers, from her work with the headline-making grape boycott launched in 1965 to her role in the feminist movement of the ’70s, to her continued work as a fearless activist. Featuring interviews with Gloria Steinem, Luis Valdez, Angela Davis, her children and more, Dolores is an intimate and inspiring portrait of a passionate champion of the oppressed and an indomitable woman willing to accept the personal sacrifices involved in committing one’s life to social change.
Brown, V. (2019-2020). Clear The Air [Blog]. cleartheaireducation.wordpress.com. #ClearTheAir is a group of educators who believe: community, learning and dialogue are essential to our personal and professional development we have the power and responsibility to lay the foundations necessary to create a more just and equitable society education is a vehicle for social change As a part of #ClearTheAir we: engage in public discourse because it allows us to live our values out loud invite others into the conversation and hold them lovingly accountable understand that we are on a lifelong journey and are committed to taking any steps that move us forward
Brown University. (2017, June 27). How Structural Racism Works [Video]. Youtube. Tricia Rose '93 PhD, Director of CSREA and Chancellor's Professor of Africana Studies Samuel Rosen '14, Senior Researcher, How Structural Racism Works Project This presentation shares ideas from Professor Rose's on-going research project, which aims to make accessible to the public what structural racism is and how it works in society. The project examines the connections between policies and practices in housing, education and other key spheres of society to reveal the intersectional and compounding effects of systemic discrimination as a significant force in American society today. In addition to sharing the outline of the project, Rose and Rosen will give examples of how it works in everyday life. www.brown.edu/race
Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), et al. (2020, May 1). Digital Town Hall: Asian Americans in the Time of Covid-19 [Video]. PBS. In connection with the upcoming PBS series, ASIAN AMERICANS, the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), WETA, and Asian American community leaders will host a digital town hall exploring how lessons from Asian American history can help us understand the experience of Asian Americans in the time of COVID-19.
Chandler-Ward. J. & Denevi, E. (2017-2022). Teaching While White [Audio podcast]. Teaching While White.org. More than 80% of teachers in the U.S. are white. But most don’t know that their whiteness matters. Teaching While White (TWW) seeks to move the conversation forward on how to be consciously, intentionally, anti-racist in the classroom. Because "white" does not mean a blank slate. It is a set of assumptions that is the baseline from which everything is judged; it is what passes for normal. TWW wants to have conversations about those assumptions: what they are, how they impact our students, and how we can confront our bias to promote racial literacy.
Chandler-Ward. J. & Denevi, E. (2021, March 3). Racial Identity for White People with Dr. Janet Helms (No. 16) [Audio podcast]. In Teaching While White. Teaching While White.org. Jenna sat down with Dr. Janet Helms to talk about her research on White racial identity development. Dr. Helms describes how her work can be a pathway towards establishing an antiracist, White identity.
Chandler-Ward. J. & Denevi, E. (2021, October 19). Beyond the Bookclub: Antiracism in Action (No. 13) [Audio podcast]. In Teaching While White. Teaching While White.org. What can White teachers do in this moment to take action in the midst of the duel pandemics or Covid and Racism? Our guests, Jose Vilson, and Kelly Wickham Hurst give their insights as two educators who are leading efforts to move schools towards antiracism.
Chandler-Ward. J. & Denevi, E. (2021, September 18). Brand New Pandemic, Same Old White Supremacy (No. 18) [Audio podcast]. In Teaching While White. Teaching While White.org. Elizabeth sat down with Thu Ahn Nguyen to discuss the ways that the pandemic has highlighted white supremacy in schools.
Chandler-Ward. J. & Denevi, E. Teaching While White [Website]. Teaching While White. More than 80% of teachers in the U.S. are white. But most don’t know that their whiteness matters. Teaching While White (TWW) seeks to move the conversation forward on how to be consciously, intentionally, anti-racist in the classroom. Because "white" does not mean a blank slate. It is a set of assumptions that is the baseline from which everything is judged; it is what passes for normal. TWW wants to have conversations about those assumptions: what they are, how they impact our students, and how we can confront our bias to promote racial literacy.
Cheng, J., et al. (2003). Race - The Power of an Illusion [TV Series]. Kanopy. The division of the world's peoples into distinct groups - "red," "black," "white" or "yellow" peoples - has became so deeply imbedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet, that's exactly what this provocative, new three-hour series by California Newsreel claims. RACE - THE POWER OF ILLUSION questions the very idea of race as innate biology, suggesting that a belief in inborn racial difference is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet race still matters. Just because race doesn't exist in biology doesn't mean it isn't very real, helping shape life chances and opportunities. (3 episodes)
Cort, J. (2021). Examining White Privilege ft. Elizabeth Denevi and Jenna Chandler-Ward [Audio podcast]. In Third Space with Jen Cort. Spreaker.com. Founders of Teaching While White Elizabeth Denevi and Jenna Chandler-Ward join third space to discuss white privilege, white allyship, white saviorism and more. Elizabeth Denevi is the director of East Ed and co-founder of Teaching While White, Elizabeth works with schools nationally to increase equity, promote diversity pedagogy, and implement strategic processes for growth and development. She also serves as an adjunct professor at Lewis & Clark College in the Graduate School of Education and Counseling. Previously, she served as a director of studies and professional development and was responsible for the stewardship and integration of curriculum from pre-kindergarten through grade 12, as well as for the oversight and coordination of professional development and evaluation for all faculty. At Georgetown Day School (DC) she served as the co-director of diversity and a senior administrator for 10 years. Elizabeth also worked at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School (VA) to create a comprehensive professional development program. She has taught English and history at a number of K-12 schools. Elizabeth has published and presented extensively on diversity and academic excellence, social justice, and equity issues. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of London, Institute of Education, a master’s degree from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University. She also holds an Oregon Preliminary Administrative License. Jenna Chandler-Ward is the Co-Founder of Teaching While White and has been an educator in non-profits, schools, and colleges for over 20 years, working with students from kindergarten to college level. Most recently, Jenna had been a middle school English and drama teacher outside of Boston for over ten years. Jenna is also a founder and co-director of the Multicultural Teaching Institute, which produces workshops and a conference for educators on issues of equity and inclusion. Jenna currently lives in Cambridge, MA, and is a diversity consultant, specializing in professional development for educators on issues of whiteness and its impacts on teaching, curriculum and leadership. She holds an M.Ed. from Pepperdine University and a bachelor’s degree from Marlboro College. Www.teachingwhilewhite.org www.easted.org
Eakins, S. L. (2019, December 9). The Power of Names (No. 117) [Audio podcast]. In Leading Equity. The Leading Equity Center. Listennotes. The Leading Equity Virtual Summit 2020 (January 2-7, 2020) Show Highlights Raising a Black boy in today’s society The Power of Names
Edutopia. (2020). Dena Simmons on Having Fearless Conversations About Race in the Classroom [Short]. Youtube. "As we think about social-emotional learning, how can we as educators not ignore what's happening in the world, not ignore the anti-Black racism, the injustice, and really have conversations about it?" Antiracist educator Dena Simmons speaks to the importance of having meaningful discussions about race and racism with your students.
Emdin, C. (n.d.). Teaching & Being Rachetdemic [Video]. TED. Christopher Emdin reveals how he aims to bridge the seemingly disparate worlds of the ivory tower and the hood in his talk, "Teaching & Being Ratchetdemic." Highlighting the major inequities in urban education, Dr. Emdin argues in favor of a simple solution: that being “ratchetdemic,” or both ratchet and academic (like having rap battles about science) can empower students to embrace themselves, their background, and their education.
Facing History and Ourselves. (n.d.). [Website]. This website provides many resources, using lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. (Facing History and Ourselves helps) educators prepare students to participate in civic life—using intellect, empathy, ethics, and choice to stand up to bigotry and hate in their own lives, communities, and schools. Create an account, for FREE, to access more resources.
Frontline. (1985, March 26). A Class Divided [Video]. PBS. The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, Jane Elliott, a teacher in a small, all-white Iowa town, divided her third-grade class into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups and gave them a daring lesson in discrimination. This is the story of that lesson, its lasting impact on the children, and its enduring power 30 years later.
Fry, J. (2021, November 5). Beyond Allyship [Audio podcast]. proximity. Jen Fry is a social justice educator who trains organizations, institutions, and businesses through an antiracist lens on issues of race, inclusion, intersectionality, diversity, and equity. She runs JenFryTalks, a social justice education firm that uses conversation to educate and empower those within athletics through an anti-racist lens on issues of race, inclusion, intersectionality, diversity, and equity. Jen shares with us today how to go beyond allyship and how to be a co-conspirator to people of color in our homes, our work, and even on social media.
Fusion. (n.d.). Why We Can and Should Abolish the Police and Prison Industrial Complex - Janaya Khan [Video]. Films for Action. Black Lives Matter activist Janaya Khan explains how we can abolish the whole criminal justice system, including police. Because, it's broken.
Gates, H. L., Jr. (2019-). Reconstruction: America After the Civil War [TV Series]. PBS. Henry Louis Gates Jr. presents a vital new four-hour documentary series on Reconstruction: America After the Civil War. The series explores the transformative years following the American Civil War, when the nation struggled to rebuild itself in the face of profound loss, massive destruction, and revolutionary social change. The twelve years that composed the post-war Reconstruction era (1865-77) witnessed a seismic shift in the meaning and makeup of our democracy, with millions of former slaves and free black people seeking out their rightful place as equal citizens under the law. Though tragically short-lived, this bold democratic experiment was, in the words of W. E. B. Du Bois, a ‘brief moment in the sun’ for African Americans, when they could advance, and achieve, education, exercise their right to vote, and run for and win public office.
General Commission on Religion and Race of The UMC. (2018, March 20). Deconstructing White Privilege with Dr. Robin DiAngelo [Video]. Youtube. Dr. Robin DiAngelo is the author of "What Does it Mean to Be White? Developing White Racial Literacy" and has been an anti-racist educator, and has heard justifications of racism by white men and women in her workshops for over two decades. This justification, which she calls “white fragility,” is a state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation. This video is part of the Vital Conversations 1 video series by the General Commission on Religion & Race of the United Methodist Church. Learn more about us by visiting our website: https://www.gcorr.org/
Goff, P.A. (2019). How we can make racism a solvable problem -- and improve policing [Video]. TED. When we define racism as behaviors instead of feelings, we can measure it -- and transform it from an impossible problem into a solvable one, says justice scientist Dr. Phillip Atiba Goff. In an actionable talk, he shares his work at the Center for Policing Equity, an organization that helps police departments diagnose and track racial gaps in policing in order to eliminate them. Learn more about their data-driven approach -- and how you can get involved with the work that still needs to be done. (This ambitious plan is part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)
Gonchar, M. (2017, March 15). 26 Mini-Films for Exploring Race, Bias and Identity With Students [Video]. The New York Times. How do we get students to consider perspectives different from their own? How do we get them to challenge their own biases and prejudices? If, as Atticus Finch famously said, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it,” how do we get our students to do that? Teachers traditionally turn to literature, history and current events to open up these conversations, but it’s always helpful to have a bigger toolbox to tackle such important and difficult issues. That’s why we pulled together these 26 short New York Times documentaries that range in time from 1 to 7 minutes and tackle issues of race, bias and identity. To help teachers make the most of these films, we also provide several teaching ideas, related readings and student activities. In the comments, we hope you’ll share how you use these films in your own classroom.
Gonzalez, J. (2017, March 12). Four Ways Teachers Can Support Students of Color (No. 64) [Audio podcast]. In Cult of Pedagogy. cultofpedagogy.com. Interview with Dena Simmons. The difference between teachers and their students has never been so stark. A recent report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that since 2014, white students no longer make up the majority in American schools. Future projections show the white population shrinking to a smaller and smaller proportion of the whole, and the combined populations of of students from other ethnic groups increasing so that together, they make up a steadily growing majority. By contrast, teachers in the U.S. are overwhelmingly white. What this tells me is that the life experiences of most of the people in charge of our classrooms have been pretty different from the experiences of most of their students. And that matters.
Greaves, W. (1989). Ida B Wells A Passion For Justice [Film]. Youtube. Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (1989, 54 mins.) documents the dramatic life and turbulent times of the pioneering African American journalist, activist, suffragist and anti-lynching crusader of the post-Reconstruction period. At the time of the film’s initial release on The American Experience in late December 1989, Wells had been virtually forgotten, her autobiography long out of print. However, Wells was a household name in Black America during much of her lifetime (1863-1931) and was considered the equal of such well-known contemporary African American leaders as Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. The words of Wells are brought to life in the film through the performance of Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison as she reads selections from Wells’ memoir, Crusade for Justice, and other writings. The film has received many awards, including First Place Documentary Award from the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame, the Silver Apple at the National Educational Film and Video Festival, and the Silver Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival. Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice is a valuable resource for a broad range of courses, including Women’s Studies, Black Studies, and Journalism.
Hammond, Z. (2013-). Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain [Blog]. crtandthebrain.com. Since you are an equity-minded educator like me, you are probably waging your own private movement to bust the myths behind student engagement (or the lack of) among low performing students of color, poor students, and English learners. ... This is a blog where we can get answers to our collective and individual questions about how we can help students become confident and competent learners. In this space, I want to highlight what I am learning from being out in schools and classrooms with teachers who are successful with diverse students. I want to focus on how we can take everyday strategies and practices and put them to work in their classrooms to be more culturally responsive. ... Just to let you know, on average, I publish a new post every other week – two times per month at the least (sometimes a few more). That gives me time to be in schools and to write. If you don’t want to miss updates on what I am seeing and learning, sign up for my newsletter by pushing that button below.
Hannah-Jones, N. (2019). 1619 [Audio podcast series].The New York Times. 1619. Apple Podcasts. In August of 1619, a ship carrying more than 20 enslaved Africans arrived in the English colony of Virginia. America was not yet America, but this was the moment it began. No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the 250 years of slavery that followed. On the 400th anniversary of this fateful moment, it is time to tell the story. “1619” is a New York Times audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones. You can find more information about it at nytimes.com/1619podcast.
Hazard, A. (n.d.). The Atlantic slave trade: What too few textbooks told you. TED-Ed. Slavery has occurred in many forms throughout the world, but the Atlantic slave trade -- which forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas -- stands out for both its global scale and its lasting legacy. Anthony Hazard discusses the historical, economic and personal impact of this massive historical injustice.
Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. (2020, October 8). Screening "Viva La Causa" and Discussion with Nelson Melgar [Video]. Youtube. To mark National Hispanic Heritage Month, HMTC offers a virtual screening and discussion of the documentary film Viva La Causa: The Story of César Chávez and a Great Movement for Social Justice, presented in conjunction with the David Taub Reel Upstanders Film Series. This film explores the farm workers strike in Delano, California, which lasted from 1965 until 1970 and paved the way for the creation of the United Farm Workers labor union. A post-screening discussion about farm workers on Long Island today is led by community activist Nelson Melgar.
Institute for Pure & Applied Mathematics (IPAM). (2018). Rochelle Gutiérrez: "Rehumanizing Mathematics: A Vision for the Future" [Video]. Youtube. For far too long, we have embraced an "equity" standpoint that has been poorly defined (Gutiérrez, 2002) or constantly shifting (NCTM, 2008). It has been difficult to assess progress beyond closing the achievement gap or recruiting more diverse students into the mathematical sciences. Instead, we should rehumanize mathematics, which considers not just access and achievement, but the politics in teaching and mathematics. This approach begins with 1) acknowledging some of the dehumanizing experiences in mathematics for students and teachers and 2) how students could be provided with windows and mirrors onto the world and ways of relating to each other with dignity. As such, we can begin to think differently about student misconceptions, teachers as identity workers, and why it is not just that diverse people need mathematics but mathematics needs diverse people (Gutiérrez, 2002; 2012). In this talk, I focus on two areas for rehumanization: 1) teaching/learning and 2) scholars and everyday citizens. With respect to teaching and learning, I present eight dimensions of a rehumanized mathematics classroom: participation/positioning; cultures/histories; windows/mirrors; living practice; broadening maths; creation; body/emotions; and ownership. Then, I offer ways for mathematicians and mathematics educators to take risks in ensuring those dimensions happens in small and large ways. In addition, with the recent national attacks on mathematics education scholars who address social justice and whiteness, I explain a bit about my case and then offer ways to rehumanize our field to affect scholars and everyday citizens. In particular, I highlight how understanding our history (e.g., how scientists in the 1970s stood for political and social action) as well as creating greater alliances between mathematicians and mathematics education scholars might allow us to take greater risks in our everyday work.
King, S. (2019-). Knowing How It's Built, So That We Can Tear It Down (No. 246) [Audio podcast]. In The Breakdown. The North Star. Today Shaun wants to teach you what may be his most important lesson on how we can actually abolish the systems and structures of mass incarceration and police brutality. We often fail in these attempts, because we don't actually know what we're tearing down. It's not one system. And we are choosing to believe that's good news. It's 30,000 microsystems. Let us explain.
King, S. (2019-). The North Star [Website]. thenorthstar.com. Independent, grassroots liberation-journalism focused on politics, power, race, policing, mass incarceration, organizing, and change. No ads, no spam, no hate or trolls because we are 100% supported by members like you.
King, S. (2022, January 19). One key way we CANNOT respond to racism & bigotry (No. 559) [Audio podcast]. In The Breakdown. The North Star. I actually think it is a natural human response to return ugliness to those who were ugly to you or someone you care about. It feels good. I get it. It's something I have to resist every single day, though, because before you know it, you may be as bad or worse than them. Yesterday I posted a horrible video of openly racist basketball fans in China openly calling former NBA player Sonny Weems a nigger there. It was ugly. But in response to it, I see something that I often see in response to hate. And I want to talk about it.It's one key way we CANNOT respond to hate. Let me unpack and explain it.
The Language & Life Project. (2020, October 19). Talking Black In America [Video]. Youtube. TALKING BLACK in AMERICA follows the unique circumstances of the descendants of American slaves and their incredible impact on American life and language. Speech varieties from the African American community reflect the imprint of African language systems, the influences of regional British and Southern American dialects, and the creativity and resilience of people living through oppression, segregation and the fight for equality. Filmed across the United States, TALKING BLACK in AMERICA is a startling revelation of language as legacy, identity and triumph over adversity. With Reverend Jeremiah Wright, DJ Nabs, Professor Griff, Quest M.C.O.D.Y., Dahlia the Poet, Nicky Sunshine and many others. For more, see talkingblackinamerica.org
The Language & Life Project. (2021, January 21). Signing Black In America [Video]. Youtube. Just like spoken languages, sign languages have dialects. Black ASL is the unique dialect of American Sign Language (ASL) that developed within historically segregated African American Deaf communities. Largely unknown to outsiders, Black ASL has become a symbol of solidarity and a vital part of identity within the Black Deaf community. For more about the documentary project, check out https://www.talkingblackinamerica.org For more information about Black Sign Language, check out the Black ASL Project: http://blackaslproject.gallaudet.edu/... and The Hidden Treasure of Black ASL: http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/bookpage...
The Language & Life Project. (2022, September 8). Talking Black In America -- Roots [Video]. PBS. Talking Black in America — Roots is the third program in a series of television documentaries exploring dimensions of African American language and culture and their formative influence on the United States and beyond; it is a celebration of African-American resiliency, creativity, and ingenuity, finding a connection of the spirit to the people and society of West Africa and the African Diaspora.
The Language & Life Project. (n.d.). The Talking Black in America Project [Website]. Talking Black in America. This 5-part documentary series explores the most controversial and misunderstood language variety in the United States: African American Language (AAL). With the perspectives of everyday people and the guidance of historians, linguists, and educators, the series showcases the history of the language, the symbolic role it plays in the lives of African Americans, and the tremendous impact on the language and culture of the United States.
McGhee, H. C. (2019). Racism has a cost for everyone [Video]. TED. Racism makes our economy worse -- and not just in ways that harm people of color, says public policy expert Heather C. McGhee. From her research and travels across the US, McGhee shares startling insights into how racism fuels bad policymaking and drains our economic potential -- and offers a crucial rethink on what we can do to create a more prosperous nation for all. "Our fates are linked," she says. "It costs us so much to remain divided."
MTV Impact. (2019, January 25). Light Skinned Privilege | Decoded [Video]. Youtube. Do light skinned black women have skin color privilege? The answer is yes! And while we tend to think about people being judged by the color of their skin, as “Racism” the truth is the “colorism” exists both inside and outside the black community. How so? Watch the episode to find out. Sources https://muse.jhu.edu/article/185135/s... https://theundefeated.com/features/co... https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0... https://www.complex.com/music/2017/06... https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-... https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/0... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... https://wcfia.harvard.edu/files/wcfia...
National Education Association Center for Social Justice. (n.d.). A Social and Racial Justice Checklist for Safe, Healthy and Just Learning. NEA edjustice. As we expand digital learning models, due to COVID-19, it’s important to remember that students with disabilities, those without access to the internet, and LGBTQ, Black, brown and Indigenous populations are at higher risk of experiencing school closures more intensely. Regardless of the education delivery system during the pandemic, all students must be provided the care and attention and learning opportunities they are guaranteed and deserve. Ask yourself the following questions when planning or assessing digital instruction through a racial justice lens:
Netflix. (2016). 13th [Video]. Youtube. Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay's examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country's history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America. This piercing, Oscar-nominated film won Best Documentary at the Emmys, the BAFTAs and the NAACP Image Awards. US Rating: TV-MA For mature audiences. May not be suitable for ages 17 and under.
Netflix. (2020, April 17). Explained | Racial Wealth Gap | FULL EPISODE | Netflix [Video]. Youtube. In partnership with Vox Media Studios and Vox, this enlightening explainer series will take viewers deep inside a wide range of culturally relevant topics, questions, and ideas. Each episode will explore current events and social trends pulled from the zeitgeist, touching topics across politics, science, history and pop culture -- featuring interviews with some of the most authoritative experts in their respective fields. In this episode: Cory Booker and others discuss how slavery, housing discrimination and centuries of inequality have compounded to create a racial wealth gap. US Rating: TV-MA. This show is designed for for mature audiences only.
The New York Times. (2019). The 1619 Project [Website]. The New York Times. The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative. 1619 and American History | The 1619 Project Book
The New York Times. (n.d.). A Conversation on Race: A series of short films about identity in America [Video]. The New York Times. Your Stories: In addition to the series of videos, we are featuring personal stories that reflect the breadth of experiences in the United States. [This page is evolving]. NOTE: Because of the often painful subject matter, some of these stories include words that may offend readers.
The New York Times Learning Network. (2021, March 4). Strategies for Facilitating Conversations About Race and Racism in the Classroom [Video]. Youtube. ducators share some of their practical strategies for facilitating conversations about race and racism in the classroom. Among their suggestions: start with a temperature check, provide varied options for participation and recognize the power of language. This video is a part of our Resources for Teaching About Race and Racism With The New York Times post: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/le... For more information: Our full guide on how to use The Learning Network: https://nyti.ms/30TLNLp
NPR. (2013-). Code Switch [Audio podcast series]. NPR. What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between. This podcast makes all of us part of the conversation — because we're all part of the story. Code Switch was named Apple Podcasts' first-ever Show of the Year in 2020.
NPR. (2019 - 2023). White Lies [Audio podcast series]. NPR.org. On the morning of August 21, 1991, a group of Cuban detainees took over a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama, and demanded their freedom. But how did they get here? And what became of them after? In season two of NPR's Pulitzer-finalist show, we unspool a decades-long story about immigration, indefinite detention, and a secret list. It's a story about a betrayal at the heart of our country's ideals. And in charting a course to our current moment of crisis at the border, we expose the lies that bind us together.
Okun, T. (2022). (divorcing) White Supremacy Culture [Website]. whitesupremacyculture.info. This website is a long-time dream finally bearing fruit, a needed remix of the widely circulated article WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE originally written and published in 1999. This website is conceived and designed by Tema Okun with support by and from many genius colleagues and friends. A note: This website is best viewed on a computer. The layout is not particularly phone or even tablet friendly.
Panoply. (2016-2017). Our National Conversation About Conversations About Race [Audio podcast]. Panoply. Co-discussants Anna Holmes, Baratunde Thurston, Raquel Cepeda and Tanner Colby host a lively multiracial, interracial conversation about the ways we can’t talk, don’t talk, would rather not talk, but intermittently, fitfully, embarrassingly do talk about culture, identity, politics, power, and privilege in our pre-post-yet-still-very-racial America. This show is "About Race."
PBLWorks. (2020, August 10). Zaretta Hammond | PBL World 2020 Keynote (Day 2) [Video]. Youtube. Zaretta Hammond shares her insights on Project Based Learning and more at PBL World 2020.
PBS. (1987, 1990). Eyes on the Prize [TV Series]. World Channel. Eyes on the Prize tells the definitive story of the civil rights era from the point of view of the ordinary men and women whose extraordinary actions launched a movement that changed the fabric of American life, and embodied a struggle whose reverberations continue to be felt today. Winner of numerous Emmy Awards, a George Foster Peabody Award, an International Documentary Award, and a Television Critics Association Award, Eyes on the Prize is the most critically acclaimed documentary on civil rights in America. Eyes on the Prize recounts the fight to end decades of discrimination and segregation. It is the story of the people — young and old, male and female, northern and southern — who, compelled by a meeting of conscience and circumstance, worked to eradicate a world where whites and blacks could not go to the same school, ride the same bus, vote in the same election, or participate equally in society. It was a world in which peaceful demonstrators were met with resistance and brutality — in short, a reality that is now nearly incomprehensible to many young Americans. Through contemporary interviews and historical footage, Eyes on the Prize traces the civil rights movement from the Montgomery bus boycott to the Voting Rights Act; from early acts of individual courage through the flowering of a mass movement and its eventual split into factions. Julian Bond, political leader and civil rights activist, narrates.
PBS. (2011). The Black Power Mixtape [Film]. Youtube. For three decades, the film canisters sat undisturbed in a cellar beneath the Swedish National Broadcasting Company. Inside was roll after roll of startlingly fresh and candid 16mm footage shot in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, all of it focused on the anti-war and Black Power movements. When filmmaker Goran Hugo Olsson discovered the footage, he decided he had a responsibility to shepherd this glimpse of history into the world. With contemporary audio interviews from leading African American artists, activists, musicians and scholars, The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 looks at the people, society, culture, and style that fuelled an era of convulsive change. Utilizing an innovative format that riffs on the popular 1970s mixtape format, Mixtape is a cinematic and musical journey into the black communities of America. At the end of the '60s and into the early '70s, Swedish interest in the U.S. civil rights movement and the U.S. anti-war movement peaked. With a combination of commitment and naiveté, Swedish filmmakers traveled across the Atlantic to explore the Black Power movement, which was being alternately ignored or portrayed in the U.S. media as a violent, nascent terrorist movement. Despite the obstacles they encountered, both from the conservative white American power establishment and from radicalized movement members themselves, the Swedish filmmakers stayed committed to their investigation, and ultimately formed bonds with key figures in the movement. This newly discovered footage offers a penetrating examination — through the lens of Swedish filmmakers — of the Black Power movement from 1967 to 1975, and its worldwide resonance. The result is like an anthropological treatise on an exotic civilization from the point of view of outsiders who approached their subject with no assumptions or biases.
PBS. (2014, September 26). America After Ferguson [Video]. PBS. This PBS town hall meeting, moderated by PBS NEWSHOUR co-anchor and managing editor Gwen Ifill, explores the many issues brought into public discourse in the wake of Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, Missouri. The program includes national leaders and prominent thinkers in the areas of law enforcement, race and civil rights, as well as government officials, faith leaders and youth.
PBS. (2016). The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution [Film]. AVON. Revisit the turbulent 1960s, when a new revolutionary culture emerged with the Black Panther Party at the vanguard. Stanley Nelson tells the vibrant story of a pivotal movement that feels timely all over again.
PBS. (2022, October 17). Rising Against Asian Hate: One Day in March [Film]. Youtube. Explore the fight against Asian American hate following the March 2021 mass shootings at three spas in Atlanta. Examine how this critical moment of racial reckoning sheds light on the struggles, triumphs and achievements of AAPI communities.
PBS. (n.d.). Black Culture Connection [Website including videos]. PBS. Welcome to PBS' Black Culture Connection. This is a place where we celebrate Black experiences, learn Black history, and uplift Black voices. Come for the documentaries, stay for the Block Parties. Explore Black history and culture though films, stories, and voices across public media.
Peck, R. (2016). I am Not Your Negro: James Baldwin and Race in America [Film]. Kanopy. An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism. In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends--Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript. Now, in his incendiary new documentary, master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.
Race Forward. (n.d.) Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast [Audio podcast]. Race Forward. Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast features movement voices, stories, and strategies for racial justice. Co-hosts Chevon and Hiba give their unique takes on race and pop culture, and uplift narratives of hope, struggle, and joy, as we continue to build the momentum needed to advance racial justice in our policies, institutions, and culture. Build on your racial justice lens and get inspired to drive action by learning from organizational leaders and community activists.
Robinson, T. (2020, May 27). A Time for Justice [Video]. Youtube. In A Time for Justice, four-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker Charles Guggenheim captured the spirit of the civil rights movement through historical footage and the voices of those who participated in the struggle. Narrated by Julian Bond and featuring John Lewis, the 38-minute film allows today’s generation of students to witness firsthand the movement’s most dramatic moments—the bus boycott in Montgomery, the school crisis in Little Rock, the violence in Birmingham and the triumphant 1965 march for voting rights.
Sambou, T. S. (n.d.) The First Time I Realized I Was Black [Video Series]. CNN. In "The Souls of Black Folk," W.E.B. Du Bois talks about the first time he realized his skin color made him different. We asked celebrities, CNN anchors and reporters, and others to tell us when they first realized that being black affected how people treated them. Share your own story with #realizediwasblack
Sen, R. (n.d.). What is Systemic Racism? [Videos]. Race Forward. "What Is Systemic Racism?" is an 8-part video series that shows how racism shows up in our lives across institutions and society: Wealth Gap, Employment, Housing Discrimination, Government Surveillance, Incarceration, Drug Arrests, Immigration Arrests, Infant Mortality… yes, systemic racism is really a thing. Featuring Jay Smooth, produced by Kat Lazo. Follow online with #SystemicRacismIs. Rinku Sen President of Race Forward & Publisher of Colorlines introduces the series.
Simien, J. (2014). Dear White People [Film]. Tubi. Black students at an Ivy League university try to navigate their way through supposedly post-racial America in this provocative and hilarious satire.
Singer, B., et al. (2002). Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin [Film]. AVON. On November 20, 2013, Bayard Rustin was posthumously awarded the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. Who was this man? He was there at most of the important events of the Civil Rights Movement - but always in the background. Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin asks "Why?" It presents a vivid drama, intermingling the personal and the political, about one of the most enigmatic figures in 20th-century American history. One of the first "freedom riders," an adviser to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, organizer of the march on Washington, intelligent, gregarious and charismatic, Bayard Rustin was denied his place in the limelight for one reason - he was gay. Rustin was born in 1912 into a Pennsylvania Quaker family steeped in ideas of social justice and non-violence. He moved to Harlem during the socially and culturally tumultuous 1930s and, after a brief flirtation with the Communist Party found a more congenial home in A.J. Muste's pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation. While there, he served prison terms for resisting the draft during World War II and later for integrating interstate buses. When A. Philip Randolph, aging head of the Black labor movement, turned to the fellowship for tactical help, Rustin worked closely with him and developed a belief that the labor movement offered the best hope for Black advancement. Then in 1953, Rustin was arrested during a casual homosexual encounter. A.J. Muste forced him out of the fellowship. When the Montgomery bus boycott was launched, he went to Alabama in 1956 and became a mentor in non-violence to the 26-year-old Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Though Rustin would advise the younger civil rights leader until his assassination in 1968, King broke publicly with Rustin in 1960, when Representative Adam Clayton Powell threatened King over the issue of Rustin's homosexuality. But when the 1963 march on Washington was proposed, the civil rights leadership recognized there was only one man who could organize it - Bayard Rustin. After the march's overwhelming success Rustin forged the fragile alliance between the labor unions, the Civil Rights Movement and the Democratic Party which was responsible for much of the landmark civil rights legislation of the 1960's. Later on, Rustin angered former colleagues by not speaking out against the war in Vietnam, and by taking controversial stands against Black Nationalism and affirmative action. In the 1970s and 1980s, he returned to his early interest in international affairs and human rights, working on behalf of refugees around the world. Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin contributes a fascinating new chapter to our understanding of both progressive movements and gay life in 20th-century America.
Smith, C. (n.d.). The danger of silence [Video]. TED. "We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't," says poet and teacher Clint Smith. A short, powerful piece from the heart, about finding the courage to speak up against ignorance and injustice.
Smith, L. (2015, February 23). American Denial [Video]. PBS. In his 1944 study of the ‘Negro Problem’ in America, Gunnar Myrdal posed a simple, disturbing question: How can Americans espouse a belief in liberty, equality and equal opportunity while enabling openly racist Jim Crow practices against black citizens? American Denial uses ‘the Myrdal question’ to probe and expose the power of denial and unconscious bias in what some have called a ‘post-racial’ America. The film’s narrative cross-cuts between past and present, between Myrdal’s investigation –-and his own personal struggle with denial— and 21st century stories of racial injustice that we overlook while insisting on the preeminence of the ideals of liberty, justice and equality. The film’s original artwork and photo-montage reenactments brings viewers face-to-face with racist ‘stop and frisk’ practices, our incarceration crisis, and racially patterned poverty. The film introduces psychological testing that reveals white implicit bias toward African Americans, as well as African American’s negative attitudes toward themselves. Historians, psychologists, sociologists and Myrdal’s family members offer expert insight, but also share their own personal, unsettling stories. The result is a film that challenges our assumptions about who we are and what we really believe, while illuminating a pattern of racial oppression that we have actively recreated throughout history to the present moment — while just as actively denying its consequences.
Smithsonian. (2017, October 10). Confronting the Past: The Tulsa Race Massacre (Season 2, Episode 9) [Audio podcast]. In Sidedoor. Smithsonian Institution. May 31 and June 1, 1921, a riot destroyed almost 40 blocks of a wealthy black neighborhood in North Tulsa, Oklahoma. No one knows how many people died, no one was ever convicted, and no one really talked about it nearly a century later. This is the story of the Tulsa Race Massacre and why it's important that you know it.
Smithsonian. (2018, May 9). Cherokee Story Slam (Season 2, Episode 24) [Audio podcast]. In Sidedoor. Smithsonian Institution. Animals that talk? A bag of fire ants? Secret dancing superpowers? In this episode, Robert Lewis, an acclaimed Cherokee storyteller, spins stories about a legendary troublemaker: Jistu the Rabbit. Along the way, we visit the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, exploring the power stories hold to keep people connected to their culture across time and geographic distance. Experience the transformative power of a good tale.
Stanford SPARQ. (n.d.). RaceWorks Video Collection [Video Series]. Stanford University. Race Works toolkit. Includes videos, instructions & materials, and more.
Stevenson, B. (2012). We need to talk about an injustice [Video]. TED. In an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives. These issues, which are wrapped up in America's unexamined history, are rarely talked about with this level of candor, insight and persuasiveness.
TED-Ed. (2018, July 24). The breathtaking courage of Harriet Tubman - Janell Hobson [Video]. Youtube. Take a closer look at the life of escaped slave and American icon Harriet Tubman, who liberated over 700 enslaved people using the Underground Railroad. -- Download a free audiobook version of "The Underground Railroad" and support TED-Ed's nonprofit mission: https://adbl.co/2LEl0sU Check out our full book recommendation: https://shop.ed.ted.com/collections/t... Escaping slavery; risking everything to save her family; leading a military raid; championing the cause of women’s suffrage; these are just a handful of the accomplishments of one of America’s most courageous heroes. Janell Hobson details Harriet Tubman's many fights for freedom. Lesson by Janell Hobson, directed by Yan Dan Wong.
TED. (2009). The Danger of a Single Story (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi) [Video]. Youtube. Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
TEDWomen (2016). The racial politics of time - Brittney Cooper [Video]. TED. Cultural theorist Brittney Cooper examines racism through the lens of time, showing us how historically it has been stolen from people of color, resulting in lost moments of joy and connection, lost years of healthy quality of life and the delay of progress. A candid, thought-provoking take on history and race that may make you reconsider your understanding of time, and your place in it.
TEDx Talks. (2016, March 21). Let's get to the root of racial injustice | Megan Ming Francis | TEDxRainier [Video]. Youtube. In this inspiring and powerful talk, Megan Francis traces the root causes of our current racial climate to their core causes, debunking common misconceptions and calling out "fix-all" cures to a complex social problem Megan Ming Francis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Washington where she specializes in the study of American politics, race, and the development of constitutional law. She is particularly interested in the construction of rights and citizenship, black political activism, and the post-civil war South. Born and raised in Seattle, WA, she was educated at Garfield High School, Rice University in Houston, and Princeton University where she received her M.A. and her Ph.D. in Politics. In her award winning book, Civil Rights and the Making of the Modern American State, shows that the battle against lynching and mob violence in the first quarter of the 20th century were pivotal to the development of civil rights and the growth of federal court power. She is inspired by people who fight for justice–even when the end appears nowhere in sight.
TEDxUofA. (2018, September 28). "White Immunity": Working through the pitfalls of "privilege" discourse | Nolan Cabrera [Video]. Youtube. White immunity builds off White privilege, and explores how Whiteness creates a type of social inoculation from racism for White people. Dr. Cabrera links the historical formation of Whiteness in the U.S. to contemporary times, ultimately calling for White people to develop greater racial empathy and responsibility. Nolan Cabrera is scholar of race and racism, specifically focusing on Whiteness in higher education. He has also been deeply involved in the Mexican American Studies controversy in Tucson Unified, recently serving as an expert statistician for the plaintiffs in the federal case. He was the only academic featured in the MTV documentary "White People." This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
Thurston, B. (2019). How to deconstruct racism, one headline at a time [Video]. TED. Baratunde Thurston explores the phenomenon of white Americans calling the police on Black Americans who have committed the crimes of ... eating, walking or generally "living while Black." In this profound, thought-provoking and often hilarious talk, he reveals the power of language to change stories of trauma into stories of healing -- while challenging us all to level up.
Tippet, K. (2017, January 19). Eula Biss - Talking About Whiteness [Audio podcast]. In On Being. The On Being Project. You can’t think about something if you can’t talk about it, says Eula Biss. The writer helpfully opens up lived words and ideas like complacence, guilt, and opportunity hoarding for an urgent reckoning with whiteness. This conversation was inspired by her 2015 essay in The New York Times, “White Debt.”
UHGCSW. (2018, September 6). A Conversation on Race and Privilege with Angela Davis and Jane Elliott [Video]. Youtube. A Conversation on Race and Privilege with Angela Davis and Jane Elliott is the latest installment of the student-led Social Justice Solutions series. Each year, we invite activists, thought leaders, and the community to explore action-oriented strategies to affect social change. This year we are honored to host two luminaries who have long been on the front lines of pushing the national conversation on race and racial justice forward.
Vedantam, S. (n.d.). Changing Behavior, Not Beliefs [Audio podcast episode]. Hidden Brain Media. The rift between police and Black Americans can feel impossible to bridge. But in his work with police departments across the U.S., Yale psychologist Phillip Atiba Goff has found novel ways to address the problem.
Vedantam, S. (n.d.) The Mind of the Village [Audio podcast episode]. Hidden Brain Media. A culture of racism can infect us all. On this week’s Radio Replay, we discuss the implicit biases we carry that have been forged by the society around us.
Wallace, J. (2020, June 17). Minding the Obligation Gap: The Central Role of Leadership [Video]. Youtube. Minding the Obligation Gap Summer Learning Institute Webinar #1: Privilege, Equity, Pedagogy
Wilbur, M. (2019-2022). All My Relations [Audio podcast series]. All My Relations Podcast. Haslihail and Osiyo! Welcome to All My Relations, a podcast where we explore what it means to be a Native person in 2019. To be an Indigenous person is to be engaged in relationships—relationships to land and place, to a people, to non-human relatives, and to one another. All My Relations is a place to explore those relationships, and to think through Indigeneity in all its complexities. On each episode hosts Matika Wilbur (Tulalip and Swinomish) and Adrienne Keene (Cherokee Nation), delve into a different topic facing Native peoples today, bringing in guests from all over Indian Country to offer perspectives and stories. We dive deep, play some games, laugh a lot, cry sometimes, and hope that you’ll join us on this journey together. The podcast came from a desire to have more Indigenous voices accessible in mainstream media—both Matika and Adrienne are surrounded every day in life and work by brilliant Native folks who are fighting and resisting settler colonialism, while also celebrating and uplifting their communities and cultures. The majority of Americans never see this side of Indian Country, and instead only see stereotypical Hollywood Indians set in the historic past or sad, dark poverty porn. We want to offer an alternative, to move beyond bland stereotypes and misrepresentations, and engage in the messy, beautiful, and complicated parts of being Indigenous. We want this space to be for everyone—for Native folks to laugh, to hear ourselves reflected, and give us a chance to think deeper about some of the biggest issues facing our communities, and for non-Native folks to listen and learn. Our first season covers a wide range of topics from food sovereignty to Native mascots, fashion, literature, sex, relationships, DNA, identity, politics, and more. We talk with incredible guests like Kim Tallbear, Jessica Metcalfe, Stephanie Fryberg, Deborah Parker, Valerie Seagrest, Billy Ray Belcourt and Joshua Whitehead, and so many more. We can’t wait to share our conversations with you. Wado and t̕igʷicid!
Wilkinson, B. (2021, August 10). Racism is the Problem - What Equity and Justice Require of Us w/ Tamice Spencer [Audio Podcast]. In The Diversity Gap. Live Grace Productions. Anchor.fm. Racism is the Problem - What Equity and Justice Require of Us w/ Tamice Spencer Insight: Your team’s lack of “racial diversity” is not the root of the problem. Racism and white supremacy are the root problems. Action: Adjust your perspectives and strategies accordingly. My conversation partner for this episode is Tamice Spencer. Tamice graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a double major Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies and Advertising. At age 20 she felt the call to vocational ministry quite strongly and hasn’t looked back. She has worked with hundreds of young adults and has a passion for learning, speaking, songwriting, and teaching. Tamice is the Founder of Sub:Culture Incorporated a non profit that seeks to eradicate barriers for black college students. Sub: Culture Incorporated was created with students on the margins in mind and a longing to see them centered, and holistically cared for while on campus. Tamice is also co-founder of the Kingdom Collaborative, an Atlanta based collective of HBCU ministry practitioners. For six years she served on full-time staff with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and the last two years on staff as the Associate Area Director of HBCU Planting & Strategy for the Southeast Region.
Wilkinson, B. (2021, August 24). Motivation Matters - Interrogating White Racial Identity and Practicing Antiracism w/ Jenny Potter [Audio Podcast]. In The Diversity Gap. Live Grace Productions. Anchor.fm. Motivation Matters - Interrogating White Racial Identity and Practicing Antiracism w/ Jenny Potter Insight: Your motivation for diversifying your team matters. Action: If your motivation is to honor people's dignity, keep going. If your motivation is to appear relevant, stop now. Jenny Booth Potter is a woman who has dedicated her life to practicing antiracism and to supporting the work of Black women activists. Jenny is thoughtful and brings so much clarity and conviction to her antiracism work. In this conversation, we dive into what it’s been like for her as a white woman to go on a journey of show up to the work of racial justice with consistency and authenticity. I am grateful for Jenny’s voice and leadership, and I know you will be too.
Wilkinson, B. (2021, February 9). Slowing Down Enough to Know What's Driving Your Cultural Change [Audio Podcast]. In The Diversity Gap. Live Grace Productions. Anchor.fm. The *way* we pursue change is just as important as the *why.* In this episode, Bethaney reviews and closes out the culture series. You'll get a recap of every lesson in the series, as well as some perspectives on how to slow down enough to evaluate *how* you're pursuing change. The tools we use to pursue cultural change are important! Listen in to hear why.
Wilkinson, B. (2021, January 14). Resisting Racial Color Blindness in Anxious Times [Audio Podcast]. In The Diversity Gap. Live Grace Productions. Anchor.fm. In this episode of The Diversity Gap Academy, we take a break from our series on organizational culture to discuss racial color blindness. When the world is anxious and as racial tensions rise, racial color blindness can seem like the way to go. In this episode, we explore: what is racial color blindness? How is it showing up these days? How do we resist it? And why? Insight: Your team’s lack of “racial diversity” is not the root of the problem. Racism and white supremacy are the root problems. Action: Adjust your perspectives and strategies accordingly. My conversation partner for this episode is Tamice Spencer. Tamice graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a double major Bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies and Advertising. At age 20 she felt the call to vocational ministry quite strongly and hasn’t looked back. She has worked with hundreds of young adults and has a passion for learning, speaking, songwriting, and teaching. Tamice is the Founder of Sub:Culture Incorporated a non profit that seeks to eradicate barriers for black college students. Sub: Culture Incorporated was created with students on the margins in mind and a longing to see them centered, and holistically cared for while on campus. Tamice is also co-founder of the Kingdom Collaborative, an Atlanta based collective of HBCU ministry practitioners. For six years she served on full-time staff with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and the last two years on staff as the Associate Area Director of HBCU Planting & Strategy for the Southeast Region.
Williams, D. R. (2016). How Racism Makes Us Sick [Video]. TED. Why does race matter so profoundly for health? David R. Williams developed a scale to measure the impact of discrimination on well-being, going beyond traditional measures like income and education to reveal how factors like implicit bias, residential segregation and negative stereotypes create and sustain inequality. In this eye-opening talk, Williams presents evidence for how racism is producing a rigged system -- and offers hopeful examples of programs across the US that are working to dismantle discrimination.
Winning in Life Today. (2020, June 11). Resmaa Menakem- Racialized Trauma - The Weathering Effects on the Human Body [Video]. Youtube. My guest Resmaa Menakem is a national speaker, licensed therapist, and New York Times best selling author. In this episode of FB Live w/ Nicole Evans, Resmaa talks about the weathering effects of racialization on the human body. Be sure to check out his New York Times best selling book entitled "My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies"
WNET, et al. (2013). The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross [TV Series]. AVON. Survey the full sweep of African-American history with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: This series chronicles the full sweep of African American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent right up to today when America remains a nation deeply divided by race.
YouTube Movies and TV. (2013). 12 Years a Slave [Video]. Youtube. (Buy or Rent) From director Steve McQueen comes this powerful nominee for nine Academy Awards®, including Best Picture, based on Solomon Northup's astonishing true story. In 1841, Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a free citizen, is kidnapped, stripped of his identity and sold into slavery. Now, he must find the strength to survive in this unflinching story of hope that earned a Golden Globe® for Best Picture, Drama.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Banton, L. (2015). What We Now Know about Race and Ethnicity. Berghahn Books. Attempts of nineteenth-century writers to establish “race” as a biological concept failed after Charles Darwin opened the door to a new world of knowledge. Yet this word already had a place in the organization of everyday life and in ordinary English language usage. This book explains how the idea of race became so important in the USA, generating conceptual confusion that can now be clarified. Developing an international approach, it reviews references to “race,” “racism,” and “ethnicity” in sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and comparative politics and identifies promising lines of research that may make it possible to supersede misleading notions of race in the social sciences.
Black Language Matters: Linguistic Bias in Education Cookie Garrett Sankofa Scholars Program Specialist San Francisco, California This talk will discuss the understanding of Ebonics in education. It will also discusses the experience of Ebonics speakers as they matriculated through education and how the perception of their home language influence their experience in education. Last, this discussion will address a few ways to engage and support Ebonics speakers as educators.
Blake, F., Ioanide, P., & Reed, A. (Eds.). (2019). Antiracism Inc. : Why the Way We Talk about Racial Justice Matters. Punctum Books. "Antiracism Inc. traces the ways people along the political spectrum appropriate, incorporate, and neutralize antiracist discourses to perpetuate injustice. It also examines the ways organizers continue to struggle for racial justice in the context of such appropriations. Antiracism Inc. reveals how antiracist claims can be used to propagate racism, and what we can do about it. While related to colorblind, multicultural, and diversity discourses, the appropriation of antiracist rhetoric as a strategy for advancing neoliberal and neoconservative agendas is a unique phenomenon that requires careful interrogation and analysis. Those who co-opt antiracist language and practice do not necessarily deny racial difference, biases, or inequalities. Instead, by performing themselves conservatively as non-racists or liberally as ‘authentic’ antiracists, they purport to be aligned with racial justice even while advancing the logics and practices of systemic racism. Antiracism Inc. therefore considers new ways of struggling toward racial justice in a world that constantly steals and misuses radical ideas and practices. The collection focuses on people and methods that do not seek inclusion in the hierarchical order of gendered racial capitalism. Rather, the collection focuses on aggrieved peoples who have always had to negotiate state violence and cultural erasure, but who work to build the worlds they envision. These collectivities seek to transform social structures and establish a new social warrant guided by what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy,” a way of being and thinking that privileges people, mutual interdependence, and ecological harmony over individualist self-aggrandizement and profits. These aggrieved collectivities reshape social relations away from the violence and alienation inherent to gendered racial capitalism, and towards the well-being of the commons. Antiracism Inc. articulates methodologies that strive toward freedom dreams without imposing monolithic or authoritative definitions of resistance. Because power seeks to neutralize revolutionary action through incorporation as much as elimination, these freedom dreams, as well as the language used to articulate them, are constantly transformed through the critical and creative interventions stemming from the active engagement in liberation struggles."
Farrington, J., Powell, N. W., Graham, G., Day, L., & Ogechi E. A. (2019). Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience. Encompass Digital Archive, Eastern Kentucky University. Slavery to Liberation: The African American Experience gives instructors, students, and general readers a comprehensive and up-to-date account of African Americans’ cultural and political history, economic development, artistic expressiveness, and religious and philosophical worldviews in a critical framework. It offers sound interdisciplinary analysis of selected historical and contemporary issues surrounding the origins and manifestations of White supremacy in the United States. By placing race at the center of the work, the book offers significant lessons for understanding the institutional marginalization of Blacks in contemporary America and their historical resistance and perseverance.
Winn, J. E. (2012). Documenting Racism: African Americans in US Department of Agriculture Documentaries, 1921-42. Bloomsbury Academic. From the silent era through the 1950s, the U.S. Department of Agriculture was the preeminent government filmmaking organization. In the United States, USDA films were shown in movie theaters, public and private schools at all educational levels, churches, libraries and even in open fields. For many Americans in the early 1900s, the USDA films were the first motion pictures they watched. And yet USDA documentaries have received little serious scholarly attention. The lack of serious study is especially concerning since the films chronicle over half a century of American farm life and agricultural work and, in so doing, also chronicle the social, cultural, and political changes in the United States at a crucial time in its development into a global superpower. Focusing specifically on four key films, Winn explicates the representation of African Americans in these films within the socio-political context of their times.

Guides & Tools

Ahadi, H. S. & Guerrero, L. A. (2020, November). Decolonizing Your Syllabus, an Anti-Racist Guide for Your College. Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. The reality today is that black indigenous people of color (BIPOC) are finding themselves having to lead anti-racism conversations and actions to change their institutions. Simply having white allies and college administration holding town-halls and meetings and listening to the BIPOC community is no longer enough. Academic institutions should all have a call to action to address racial inequities and to be accountable to meet the transformational change that society needs. Prior to the spread of the worldwide pandemics— COVID-19 infection, overt racism, increase of mental health issues, and economic instability—many inequities existed for students who identify as BIPOC. Today, remote teaching creates a further disparity for preparations and completion amongst BIPOC students in the community college system. The quarantine process may enable many college campuses to reflect on their anti-racism efforts. Doing so will also enable faculty to reconstruct their remote and online teaching with a welcoming, innovative, comfortable, and engaging approach for students who identify as BIPOC and have multiple barriers they are confronted with. If an instructor does not know where to start, a good place may be with decolonizing the course syllabus, since it is usually the first official document students encounter in any course they take.
Ahadi, H. S. (2021, February). Eradicating Xenophobia in Community College. Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. Immigrant, international, and refugee students continue to experience xenophobia and marginality living in the United States and attending community college. ... The result of xenophobia is that immigrant, international, and refugee students feel invalidated and unwelcomed. As the United States experiences the worldwide pandemic of Covid-19, many Asian Pacific Islander students experience the spread of overt racism. Indeed, xenophobia towards immigrant, international, and refugee students is not a new phenomenon. ... Community college educators and leaders should be prepared to dispel assumptions and stereotypes about these groups. Educators and leaders need to dismantle the systemic barriers immigrant, international, and refugee students are confronted with on their campuses.
Ash, A. N., et al. (2020). Anti-Racism in Higher Education: A Model for Change. Race and Pedagogy Journal, 4(3). Racism continues to persist in higher education and traditional diversity initiatives that focus only on support resources and tolerance training continue to fall short in making lasting change on college and university campuses. The purpose of this scholarly paper is to present a model for change within higher education that distributes leadership and institutional power across racial lines and enlightens the White community about systemic inequities.
Bagwell, O. (1998). Africans in America [TV series]. WGBH Boston for PBS. America's journey through slavery is presented in four parts. For each era, you'll find a historical Narrative, a Resource Bank of images, documents, stories, biographies, and commentaries, and a Teacher's Guide for using the content of the Web site and television series in U.S. history courses.
Blackwell, D. M. (2010). Sidelines and Separate Spaces: Making Education Anti-Racist for Students of Color. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 13(4), 473–494. (Requires CCC login) The way in which anti-racist education is currently conceptualized and practiced holds very few benefits for students of color. By using whiteness theory and the politics of identity and difference, many educators have developed pedagogical interventions that are concerned with bringing white students into a consciousness about racism and white privilege, and examining the effect of racial-identity politics on classroom interactions. Their aim to cultivate an anti-oppressive educational environment for all students is undermined by their preoccupation with identity politics, whiteness and white students. Thus, in both theory and practice, students of color are often rendered invisible on the sidelines or their personal stories are used to benefit white students and white educators. Scholar-practitioners in this field have not adequately considered what counts as anti-racist education for students of color. In this paper, I tell stories about my own experiences as a black woman graduate student as a way of "talking back" to the disjunctures between pedagogical intentions and the disappointing realities of anti-racist classrooms. I identify the pedagogical obstacles that block instructors from positioning students of color as a central educational concern alongside their white classmates, and argue that anti-racist educators must reexamine their principles and practices from the standpoint of students of color. Finally, I turn to black feminist standpoint theory to discuss the importance of racially separate spaces as a pedagogical intervention that can make education anti-racist for students of color.
Block, J. (2015, January 12). Educate to Liberate: Build an Anti-Racist Classroom. Edutopia. Teachers must recognize and empower students with backgrounds different from their own, including their voices in the conversation and validating their experiences and perspectives.
Burnham, K. (2020, July 31). 5 Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies. Northeastern University Graduate Programs. Over the past few decades, students, their experiences, upbringings, and backgrounds have changed. Classrooms now reflect families of varying races, cultures, and socioeconomic statuses. As a result, the way teachers educate these students must change, too, says Cherese Childers-McKee, assistant teaching professor in Northeastern University’s College of Professional Studies. One of these shifting approaches to education is known as culturally responsive teaching. Below, we explore the concept of culturally responsive teaching, compare it against traditional teaching models, and offer a number of strategies that you can use to incorporate the approach into your own methods.
California Newsreel. (2008). Unnatural Causes [Film]. Kanopy. UNNATURAL CAUSES sounds the alarm about the extent of our glaring socio-economic and racial inequities in health and searches for their root causes. But those causes are not what we might expect. While we pour more and more money into drugs, dietary supplements and new medical technologies, UNNATURAL CAUSES crisscrosses the country investigating the findings that are shaking up conventional understanding of what really makes us healthy or sick. UNNATURAL CAUSES is a medical detective story out to solve the mystery of what's stalking and killing us before our time, especially those of us who are less affluent and darker-skinned. But its investigators keep peeling back the onion, broadening their inquiry beyond the immediate, physical causes of death to the deeper, underlying causes that lurk in our neighborhoods, our jobs and even back in history. The perpetrators, of course, aren't individuals but rather societal and institutional forces. And theirs are not impulsive crimes of passion. These are slow deaths the result of a lifetime of grinding wear and tear, thwarted ambition, segregation and neglect. But this is also a story of hope and possibility, of communities organizing to gain control over their destinies and their health. The good news is that if bad health comes from policy decisions that we as a society have made, then we can make other decisions. Some countries already have, and they are living longer, fuller lives as a result.
Castillo-Montoya, M., Abreu, J., & Abad, A. (2019). Racially Liberatory Pedagogy: A Black Lives Matter Approach to Education. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), 32(9), 1125–1145. (Requires CCC login) In this study, we sought to understand how Black lives matter (BLM) epistemology, as displayed through six months of social media content from official accounts, can inform a racially liberatory pedagogy in higher education for Black and other racially minoritized students. We found BLM, through Facebook and Twitter, situated intersectional Black culture in the contemporary struggle for liberation. BLM also offered information that can raise its followers' intersectional critical consciousness. Additionally, BLM content highlighted actions that can support Black liberation. Lastly, BLM content supported the building of relationships and naming of emotions as Black people work toward their liberation. In this sense, BLM connected with elements of a racially liberatory pedagogy and offered nuances that advanced the framework. We discuss the implications of this framework for teaching in higher education.
Center for Antiracist Research. (n.d.). Be Antiracist: Where academic research meets antiracist action. Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. Whereas racist research historically has posed the question, “What is wrong with people?” antiracist research now asks a different question, a better question: “What is wrong with policies?” Our belief is that framing research on race and racism around antiracist questions leads to antiracist narratives, effective policy solutions, and impactful advocacy campaigns that cut to the root of racial inequality: racist policy.
Cole, C.E. (2017), "Culturally sustaining pedagogy in higher education: teaching so that Black Lives Matter", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 36 No. 8, pp. 736-750. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy Purpose The purpose of this paper is to show how the principles of Black Lives Matter can be used to enact a culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) in higher education settings, particularly in small colleges that serve significant populations of students who are underrepresented in higher education. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on examples from college courses in media and society, organizational communication, and interpersonal communication, the case study shows application of the principles of Black Lives Matter in the college classroom at two different institutions in the urban Northeast USA, where the majority of the students are young people of color and/or first-generation college students. Findings The paper shows how founding principles of Black Lives Matter, particularly diversity, intersectionality, loving engagement, and empathy, can be used to guide concrete pedagogical practices. It provides examples of how to use Black Lives Matter as a framework to enhance and improve college teaching to make it more diverse and inclusive. Research limitations/implications This case study is based on the author’s experiences teaching at two majority-minority colleges in Greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA. This paper is not the result of a systematic research study. Practical implications This paper has significant implications for how to enact CSP in higher education settings. This paper is valuable to those looking for specific strategies to include more diverse and inclusive teaching strategies. This research also shows both the utility and impact of Black Lives Matter when applied to higher education. Social implications This paper improves public understanding of Black Lives Matter as a social movement. Originality/value Since the Black Lives Matter movement is fairly new, there is limited academic research on it. Further, there has not been attention to how Black Lives Matter provides insight into pedagogy, particularly in higher education.
Dillard, C. (2020, January 29). Black History Month: Teaching the Complete History. Southern Poverty Law Center. Go beyond trauma and struggle to examine the liberation, civic engagement, creativity and intersecting identities of Black people during Black History Month.
Diversity Best Practices. (2020, June). Being an Upstander: Racism : A Practical Guide. Diversity Best Practices. We have developed a few best practices to support your efforts to address these issues and continue having essential dialogue both internally and externally to support your employees, your stakeholders and your customers. Our array of proposed solutions will equip you to be an upstander: someone that speaks out or acts in support of another being attacked or discriminated against. Incorporate this content into your messaging, programming, and communications.
Dominguez, M. (2021). Cultivating Epistemic Disobedience: Exploring the Possibilities of a Decolonial Practice-Based Teacher Education. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(5), pp. 551+. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy Even as momentum builds for critical, culturally sustaining, and decolonial approaches to pedagogy, curriculum, and teacher education, efforts in practice-based teacher education remain epistemically linked to Eurocentric, colonial objects of schooling, and shallow notions of justice. Yet attention to the what the day-to-day work of teaching is critical to novices' development, especially when the challenges we hope they will embrace--disrupting oppression and advancing liberation--are so complicated. Clear, concrete models of decolonial repertoires of practice are needed to ensure our teacher education efforts produce skilled practitioners prepared to advance the decolonial project in education. In this article, through a decolonial reading of the practice-based literature, and an examination of rehearsal deployed with decolonial intent, argue for a decolonial practice-based teacher education that will cultivate educators to engage in epistemic disobedience, learning how to teach while resisting the coloniality that permeates schools. Keywords critical theory/critical pedagogy, diversity, multicultural teacher education, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, social justice
Donaldson, P. E. & Tavares, T. (2021, June 28). Educating for Equity: Ideas, Resources from Facing History and Ourselves. School Library Journal. Educating for Equity: Ideas, Resources from Facing History and Ourselves
Fay, L. (2019, August 7). 74 Interview: Researcher Gloria Ladson-Billings on Culturally Relevant Teaching, the Role of Teachers in Trump’s America & Lessons From Her Two Decades in Education Research. The 74. Gloria Ladson-Billings remembers that there was a difference between the black and white teachers she had growing up in Philadelphia. African-American teachers could give the students “the talk,” she recalls, referring to a 2017 Procter & Gamble television advertisement that showed black parents talking to their kids about racism. The black teachers could speak to students honestly about what it means to be African-American in a way their white counterparts never could, she remembered. Ladson-Billings speaks often about her fifth-grade teacher, Ethel Benn, who first taught her about W.E.B. DuBois. She was amazed to learn that a black person had graduated from Harvard University, she remembers; at the time it seemed impossible. Now, Ladson-Billings studies what it takes to be a successful teacher of African-American children and has written extensively about culturally relevant teaching since the 1990s.
Harper, S. R. (2009). Race-conscious student engagement practices and the equitable distribution of enriching educational experiences. Liberal Education, 95(4), 38-45. In this article, race-conscious student engagement is offered as an effective approach to narrowing racialized achievement disparities among college students, while simultaneously improving the experiences and outcomes of racial minority undergraduates. This version of student engagement is defined, and the mutual benefits it confers to students, educators, and predominantly white institutions are described in the article. But first, current racial gaps in the engagement of undergraduates are illuminated and discussed.
Haynes, C., & Patton, L. D. (2019). From Racial Resistance to Racial Consciousness: Engaging White STEM Faculty in Pedagogical Transformation. Journal of Cases in Educational Leadership, 22(2), 85–98. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy Professor Arnie Copper is among the many science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) faculty who view the learning of STEM curriculum as an intellectual exercise that is race-neutral. In this case, the authors use the White Racial Consciousness and Faculty Behavior model to illustrate how racially minoritized students can experience the classrooms of White STEM faculty who fail to see connections between their teaching, course content, and racial justice. Institutional leaders and faculty developers can use this case to generate a timely critique of the enduring racism shaping higher education and fostering hostile learning conditions on college campuses.
Jaime, A. (2020, June 1). How Latinx People Can Fight Anti-Black Racism in Our Own Culture. Teen Vogue. In this op-ed, writer Angie Jaime unpacks how Latinx people can interrogate their involvement in Black liberation and the dismantling of white supremacy.
Jones, S. P. (2020, Spring). Ending Curriculum Violence. Learning for Justice, 64. Yes, curriculum can be violent—whether you intend it or not. Here’s what it looks like and how you can avoid it.
Kazi, N. H. (2016, May 2). Islamophobia and Islamophilia: An Unusual Connection [Video]. drnaziakazi.com. Connecting strategies for inclusion of Muslims and other immigrant and racial groups.
Kernahan, C., & Chick, N. L. (2017). How Do You Listen to Your Students to Help Them Learn about Race and Racism? New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 151, 17–30. Teaching and learning can be especially difficult when the content includes race. We argue here that an effective approach is one that includes multiple angles, learning from our students and from a broad range of colleagues and disciplines.
Kishimoto, K. (2018). Anti-Racist Pedagogy: From Faculty’s Self-Reflection to Organizing within and beyond the Classroom. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 21(4), 540–554. This article is a synthesis of my own work as well as a critical reading of the key literature in anti-racist pedagogy. Its purpose is to define anti-racist pedagogy and what applying this to courses and the fullness of our professional lives entails. I argue that faculty need to be aware of their social position, but more importantly, to begin and continue critical self-reflection in order to effectively implement anti-racist pedagogy, which has three components: (1) incorporating the topics of race and inequality into course content, (2) teaching from an anti-racist pedagogical approach, and (3) anti-racist organizing within the campus and linking our efforts to the surrounding community. In other words, anti-racist pedagogy is an organizing effort for institutional and social change that is much broader than teaching in the classroom.
Kleinrock, E. (2020, June 30). Anti-Racist Work in Schools: Are You in it for the Long Haul? Learning For Justice. In the wake of Black Lives Matter protests, educators and schools across the nation are planning anti-racist work. How will you ensure your school isn’t just going through the motions?
Kubic, C. (2021, September 24). Taking Small Steps Toward Equity. Edutopia. It can be difficult to know how to keep going with equity work, but starting with culturally responsive teaching is helpful.
Latin American and Iberian Institute. (1991). Anti-Stereotype Curriculum: All Ages - Bob Peterson. Latin American and Iberian Institute, pp. 8-9. This activity comes directly from Bob Peterson’s article “Columbus and Native Issues in the Elementary Classroom” in RTC, pp. 35-41. The following is an extended direct citation (RTC, pp. 36-38) from the RTC article, with the exception of the italicized notes which have been added as elaborations. The article in its entirety is a great resource, and highly recommended.
Learning for Justice. (2018, Fall). Toolkit for "What Is White Privilege, Really?" Learning for Justice, 60. This toolkit offers advice, activities and further reading suggestions for educators who want to unpack the concept of whiteness and white privilege with themselves and with students.
Lee, D. M. (2012, January 12). Creating an Anti-Racist Classroom. Edutopia. In an age where classroom teachers find themselves defending their profession and their results, the discussion of race in the classroom seems like one more opportunity for the finger-pointers who seek deeper understanding about the declining academic performance of all American students.
Lin, L. & Lu, T. (n.d.). Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit. Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, et al. This toolkit is a project of love from the grassroots, from and by Asian American communities. As Asian Americans, we believe that our liberation is tied to Black liberation and we continue to dream about a world where all of our people will be free.
Lopez, A. E. & Jean-Marie, G. (2021). Challenging Anti-Black Racism in Everyday Teaching, Learning, and Leading: From Theory to Practice. Journal of School Leadership, 31(1-2), 50-65. Anti-Black racism and White supremacy continue to have dire impact on the lives and educational outcomes of Black people and students in educational spaces. Examining ways in which this form of racism is disrupted, confronted, and challenged in education and schooling is important not only to Black students, scholars, practitioners, and staff, but to all People of Color. Drawing on research conducted with educators in, Canada, the United States and our lived experiences as Black educators this article examines how antiblackness and anti-Black racism is manifested in schooling spaces through teaching, learning, and leadership, and offers actions that educators can take in everyday practice to confront and disrupt. In so doing connect theory to practice, and offer possibilities that school leaders and others can act on.
Love, B. L. (2019, March 18). Dear White Teachers: You Can’t Love Your Black Students If You Don’t Know Them. Why loving “all” students isn’t good enough.
Machado, E. (2017, May 31). Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in the Literacy Classroom. International Literacy Association. Classrooms are more diverse than ever before. In our interconnected world, students bring a range of languages, literacies, and cultural practices into their schools. As educators, we’ve often thought about culture as something associated with a student’s ethnic heritage. However, a newer approach to teaching and learning called culturally sustaining pedagogy challenges us to promote, celebrate, and even critique the multiple and shifting ways that students engage with culture.
Maxwell, K., & Gurin, P. (2017). Using Dialogue to Create Inclusive Classrooms: A Case Study from a Faculty Institute. Liberal Education, 103(3–4). Classrooms should be liberatory spaces where people are nurtured and content comes to life. But students and faculty frequently note the charged nature of the classroom, especially when course content focuses on aspects of identity such as race and ethnicity or dynamics related to power and inequality. This article describes a Faculty Dialogues Institute offered by the Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR) and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at the University of Michigan that like many faculty teaching workshops, aimed to help faculty create effective classrooms that are fully inclusive of today's students; but it took a unique approach by focusing specifically on intergroup dialogue strategies. In intergroup dialogue, individuals from at least two social identity groups engage in deep listening, ask questions with the goal of understanding multiple perspectives, draw on both course content and others' identity-based experiences to deepen learning, and reflect collectively on what has been learned in order to create more inclusive spaces and strengthen understanding of course material. At the three-day institute, diverse dialogue groups were intentionally created to encourage active participation and balance power dynamics. With purposeful attention to the balance of identities, the institute was able to foster small-group interactions where no one was tokenized and where all faculty felt supported and able to contribute their authentic selves.
McCambly, H. (2018, November). Equity's Unspoken Dilemmas: Facing Trade-Offs for More Intentional Practice. Feature on Research and Leadership, 5(1). This brief provides an overview of the logical implications of different models of equity, an introduction to an empirical project that validates the material effects of varied equity definitions, and a framework for considering the trade-offs inherent in collective work to mobilize equity in environments.
McCarty, T. L., & Lee, T. S. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 101–124. In this article, Teresa L. McCarty and Tiffany S. Lee present critical culturally sustaining/ revitalizing pedagogy as a necessary concept to understand and guide educational practices for Native American learners. Premising their discussion on the fundamental role of tribal sovereignty in Native American schooling, the authors underscore and extend lessons from Indigenous culturally based, culturally relevant, and culturally responsive schooling. Drawing on Paris's (2012) and Paris and Alim's (2014) notion of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP), McCarty and Lee argue that given the current linguistic, cultural, and educational realities of Native American communities, CSP in these settings must also be understood as culturally revitalizing pedagogy. Using two ethnographic cases as their foundation, they explore what culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) looks like in these settings and consider its possibilities, tensions, and constraints. They highlight the ways in which implementing CSRP necessitates an "inward gaze" (Paris & Alim, 2014), whereby colonizing influences are confronted as a crucial component of language and culture reclamation. Based on this analysis, they advocate for community-based educational accountability that is rooted in Indigenous education sovereignty.
McKamey, P. (2020, June 17). What Anti-racist Teachers Do Differently. The Atlantic. They view the success of black students as central to the success of their own teaching. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
National Museum of African American History and Culture. (n.d.) I Am an Educator in Talking About Race. Smithsonian/National Museum of African American History and Culture. The effects of race and racism are unavoidable aspects of our modern world. Educators play a valuable role that impacts how our young people operate in the world by giving them a nuanced perspective on race. By teaching about the historical foundations of race and its role within political and social structures, we can help students better understand how race affects their own lives.
National Museum of African American History and Culture. (n.d.) Talking About Race. Smithsonian/National Museum of African American History and Culture. To create an equal society, we must commit to making unbiased choices and being antiracist in all aspects of our lives. Contents include information, videos, and reflection and discussion tools.
Nichols, H. (2020, June 5). A Guide to Equity and Antiracism for Educators. Edutopia. Teachers shaken by recent events and wondering how to work for change in our society and schools can start with these lesson plans, videos, and other resources.
Reclamation Ventures. (2020-). 28 Days of Black History [Email subscription series]. Anti-Racism Daily. A daily email to honor and celebrate Black history. Each email includes… A cultural artifact – book, movie, artwork, song, etc – that represents the impact of Black people and culture in U.S. history Action steps to carry this work into tomorrow – whether it’s donating to an organization, getting involved in your community, or more. Discussion questions to drive conversation and learning with your colleagues, students, friends and family.
Rizga, K. (2020, November 8). How to Teach American History in a Divided Country. The Atlantic. Chuck Yarborough on helping kids make connections between the past and the present. To access the full article, contact the library using the widget at the top left of this page, or complete the this online form: https://tinyurl.com/ytmvvrfy
Rizga, K. (2020, October 28). Working for Racial Justice as a White Teacher. The Atlantic. Robert Roth on an anti-racist approach to high-school history. One of this year’s largest youth-led Black Lives Matter protests took place on June 3 in front of Mission High School in San Francisco, where Robert Roth taught U.S. History and Ethnic Studies from 2005 until he retired in 2018. Roth was in the crowd, listening to teenage speakers who were urging white people like himself—including white educators, who make up 79 percent of the U.S. teaching force—to step up as allies in the fight for racial justice. It was a message that Roth has been attuned to for a long time. In 1964, when Roth was himself a teenager, he joined what became the nation’s largest anti-school-segregation boycott in New York City. As a student at Columbia University in 1968, he was a key part of one of the largest college anti-war and anti-racist protests of that era. And since he first started teaching in San Francisco in 1988, Roth has been grappling with what it means to be an anti-racist teacher working in majority Black and Latino schools. For Roth, in his 30 years in education this meant changing his curricula to highlight the role people of color played in transforming our society; helping develop the ethnic-studies program at Mission High School; working with students and teachers to make ethnic studies a part of every high school in San Francisco Unified District today; and learning from his students and from teachers of color about how to make his classrooms work for everyone, so that all students feel intellectually challenged and engaged. In conversations in 2018 and 2020, I asked Roth to reflect on how he approached teaching U.S. history as an anti-racist educator. This Q&A has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Rubel, L. H. (2017, December). Equity-Directed Instructional Practices: Beyond the Dominant Perspective. Journal of Urban Mathematics Education, 10(2), 66–105. In this article, the author synthesizes four equity-directed instructional practices: standards-based mathematics instruction, complex instruction, culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), and teaching mathematics for social justice (TMfSJ). The author organizes these practices according to the dominant and critical axes in Gutiérrez’s (2007a) equity framework. Among 12 teachers from 11 schools in a large urban school district, the author presents case studies of 3 teachers who excelled with the aforementioned dominant equity-directed practices but struggled with the critical practices of connecting to students’ experiences called for in CRP and critical mathematics called for in TMfSJ. The analysis explicitly explores the role of whiteness in these struggles. The author presents implications and recommendations for mathematics teacher education on how to better support teachers for equitable teaching that includes these critical equity-directed practices.
Simmons, D. (2017, April 18). How to Change the Story about Students of Color. Greater Good Magazine. Dena Simmons explores how educators can inadvertently harm students of color—and what we can do to bring out their best.
Simmons, D. (2019, October 1). How to Be an Antiracist Educator. ASCD, 61(10). Educators have an obligation to confront the harm of racism, says one social-emotional learning expert.
Spiegler, J. (2017, September 27). First Encounters With Race and Racism: Teaching Ideas for Classroom Conversations. The New York Times. This is a guest lesson from Jinnie Spiegler, the director of curriculum at the Anti-Defamation League. She has written for us previously on 10 Ways to Talk to Students About Sensitive Issues in the News. You might choose to use this lesson with our related Student Opinion question, “Why is race so hard to talk about?”
Student Advocacy Center of Michigan. (n.d.). Anti-Racism Toolkit. studentadvocacycenter.org. This anti-racism toolkit was developed with educators and others working with youth in mind, to help you develop your own racial consciousness and awareness, as well as that of your students. We know that as educators, community members, parents and caregivers, you are aware of how race and racism play a role in your schools and larger community. Most importantly, you must understand the impact that race and racism has on people and students as they grow and develop.
Thurber, A., Harbin, M.B., & Bandy, J. (2019). Teaching Race: Pedagogy and Practice. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Social justice education has implications for what we teach (curriculum) and how we teach (pedagogy). Despite an increasing number of instructors bringing a critical analysis of racial in/justice to their curriculum, many report challenges in teaching this content effectively. To begin to address this need, this guide summarizes some of the common challenges instructors may encounter and offers five broad pedagogical principles for teaching racial justice, and three possible strategies for implementing each strategy in the classroom.
Tufts University. (n.d.). Anti-Racist Teaching Resources. Tufts University. Antiracist teaching is about fighting for more equitable and just institutions, and policies that support the thriving of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color). (This website has) a list of resources to support you as you begin this work. While not exclusively, this lists intentionally centers the knowledge and voices of BIPOC, most prominently women of color. It does not include many popularly referenced titles that are featured on other anti-racism reading lists, in an attempt to provide different voices and perspectives.
Tyrone C. Howard, T. C. (2020, June 3). How to Root Out Anti-Black Racism From Your School. Education Week. How to Root Out Anti-Black Racism From Your School
BLM at School. (n.d.). 13 Guiding Principles. Black Lives Matter at School. The Black Lives Matter Movement is guided by the following principles.
Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks). (n.d.). Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks) Web Workbook. Dismantling Racism. This web-based workbook was originally designed to support the Dismantling Racism Works 2-day basic workshop. The workbook is now offered as a resource to the community.
National Museum of African American History and Culture. (2014-). I Am An Educator. Smithsonian. I care about my students’ racial consciousness and want to develop their racial awareness. (Interactive website/toolkit)
Yale University Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. (n.d.). Racial Awareness. Yale University. A hallmark of effective teaching is racial awareness, where recognition of racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in the classroom informs teaching strategies. Instructors can exhibit cultural consciousness, use inclusive teaching strategies, incorporate racial diversity into their courses, and moderate productive class discussions about race where relevant. A body of research confirms the ways that microaggressions in particular can affect academic performance (Sue, 2013), and instructors can consider ways to develop an inclusive class climate that respects all persons in the classroom. Instructors often lack resources for approaching diverse classrooms or teaching diversity in the classroom. A variety of factors war against inclusivity too, including in-group bias, which favors students looking or coming from a similar culture as the instructor (Goodman, 2013). Reflective teaching habits and awareness of one’s own attitude towards others can treat these unconscious issues. Too, when strong emotion clashes against the traditional nature of college discourse - polite, academic, and color-blind - conversation can go sour fast (Sue 2013). Instructors can consider a variety of examples and strategies to skillfully handle discussions of race, while strengthening theirs and their students’ knowledge of racial and cultural diversity.
National Congress of American Indians. (2019, February 9). Allies for Indian Country. National Congress of American Indians. Allies for Indian Country Learn about Tribal Nations, Citizenship, History, and Contemporary Issues NCAI encourages our friends, relatives, and neighbors, whether Native or not, to learn about the often shameful history of the United States’ dealings with tribal nations and the issues that are important to contemporary Native peoples. We also urge anyone who wants to be an ally to Native peoples to refrain from disparaging Native identity, weaponizing tribal citizenship, mocking Native cultures and religious traditions, or invoking painful aspects of our shared history for partisan gain.
Native Knowledge 360. (n.d.). Essential Understandings. Smithsonian / National Museum of the American Indian. The National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) Native Knowledge 360° Essential Understandings about American Indians is a framework that offers new possibilities for creating student learning experiences. Building on the ten themes of the National Council for the Social Studies' national curriculum standards, the NMAI's Essential Understandings reveal key concepts about the rich and diverse cultures, histories, and contemporary lives of Native Peoples. These concepts reflect a multitude of untold stories about American Indians that can deepen and expand your teaching of history, geography, civics, economics, science, engineering, and other subject areas.
Chicago United for Equity. (n.d.). Racial Equity Impact Assessment (REIA) [PDF]. Chicago United for Equity. A Racial Equity Impact Assessment (REIA) is a set of questions to investigate the benefits and burdens of a policy or practice.