An Ongoing List of Active Anti-Racism Resources

Resources to engage with and practice anti-racism, necessary now and always.

Now, more than ever, it’s not enough to not be racist. In a society predicated on anti-Blackness, and within a carceral state which continually leads to the loss of Black lives, we must be actively anti-racist. 

Anti-racism extends beyond your Instagram story or a mere hashtag (though awareness is certainly important), consisting of actions and practices which permeate nearly every aspect of your encounters with the world. For non-Black individuals, this involves cognizant unlearning of your own prejudice, internal reflection, and translation towards tangible change. 

As Scott Wood (@scottwoodsrules) writes, “Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you. Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another. And so on. So while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe.”

We’ve compiled a few resources to aid with learning and unlearning—we all have work to do, and no one should be relying on Black people to do that work for us. The following list is by no means exhaustive, and should not be seen as such. Rather, the (ongoing) collection features Black scholars, activists, authors, etc., whose voices we should all be looking to elevate.

READING

  • Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge. Eddo-Lodge has stated the book is for the white people “living a life oblivious to the fact that their skin colour is the norm and all others deviate from it”.
  • Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, and other works by Audre Lorde. Lorde’s work discusses the intersection of race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability, a reminder that all Black lives matter.
  • Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color by Kimberle Crenshaw, delving into the ways policing and carceral punishment negatively impact Black women. 
  • A Jailbreak of the Imagination: Seeing Prisons for What They Are and Demanding Transformation, an essay by Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes.
  • The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Frustrations of the 1960s unfortunately still stand today, perhaps emboldened. Yet “If we – and I mean the relatively conscious whites and the relatively conscious blacks, who must, like lovers, insist on, or create, the consciousness of others – do not falter in our duty now, we may be able, handful that we are, to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country, and change the history of the world.”

WATCHING

  • Angela Davis on Prison Abolition, the War on Drugs and Why Social Movements Shouldn’t Wait on Obama from Democracy Now. Davis has continually been on the forefront of abolitionist movements, and here elaborates on her work and directions forward. 
  • How to End the Police State, from Verso Books. In this particular moment, it becomes necessary to imagine alternatives to over-policing and carceral punishment. The video explores those alternatives, and steps towards achieving them.  
  • The 13th (available on Netflix). Ava DuVernay’s 2016 documentary traces the 13th Amendment (prohibiting slavery) from its origins to the modern day criminal justice system. She emphasizes the repeated exploitation of the act in maintaining a racial hierarchy.
  • When They See Us (available on Netflix). Another work from DuVernay, When They See Us revisits the Central Park Five, a group of African American men accused of assaulting a joker in New York City. The series clears their names, exploring how an unjust ‘justice’ system forced confessions and obscured the truth.
  • Just Mercy (via Warner Bros). Walter McMillan (played by Jamie Fox) is placed on death row for a crime he did not commit, until Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) provides legal aid. The film is free for the entire month of June in an effort to educate viewers on systemic racism.
  • I Am Not Your Negro (available on Amazon Prime). Director Raul Peck pieces together an unfinished James Baldwin manuscript, written to confront America’s longstanding history of racism, noting “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
  • The Black Power Mixtape, with Angela Davis, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, and others. Davis infamously states, “When someone asks me about violence, I just find it incredible, because what it means is that the person who’s asking that question has absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country”

 

DOING

  • Keep in mind the Minnesota Freedom Fund and the Brooklyn Bail Fund have recently been asking donors to consider making contributions to other organizations.
  • Donate to the Black Visions Collective, based in MN and focusing on the Black queer and trans community. 
  • Donate to the National Bail Fund Network, a directory of community bail funds with links to a COVID rapid response fund. 
  • Donate to No New Jails NYC, committed to prison abolition. 
  • Always, always address racism at home, in the workplace, in public settings, and anywhere else. Move beyond optical allyship. As Audre Lorde once said, your silence will not protect you
  • Keep the energy going. Find local grassroots organizations to become involved with.

 

 

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