Anti-black racism in the U.S. runs wide and deep. The severe consequences have existed for generations. The year 2020 placed in stark relief the cost of structural racism and white supremacy on Black lives at the hands of law enforcement, the criminal justice system, the health care system and the labor market. In an effort to promote anti-racist and anti-bias learning the Equity and Engagement Committee provided attorneys and staff the opportunity to participate in a 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge©. Based on the work of diversity expert Eddie Moore Jr., this challenge was a way to further ones understanding of white privilege and white supremacy in the context of advancing social justice. The committee used resources from Moore Jr.'s work with additional content suggested by the American Bar Association Section of Labor and Employment to build the following list to read, watch, and listen.
The articles, reports, podcasts, and videos below cover a range of historical and contemporary perspectives on being Black in America and the impacts of white privilege and systemic racism. The sections 'listen,' 'read,' and 'watch' were utilized in Outten & Golden's Racial Justice challenge. The additional resources section provides further supplemental resources for continued learning about racial equity and social justice.
Listen:
- Frederick Douglass – 'Fourth of July' speech [referenced in above article] (July 5, 1852)
- Nikole Hannah-Jones featuring Matthew Desmond – The Economy that Slavery Built, "1619" podcast (Aug. 30, 2019)
- Fresh Air podcast on NPR – 'A Call For Reparations: Nikole Hannah-Jones On The Wealth Gap' (June 24, 2020)
- Fresh Air podcast on NPR – Policing is an ‘Avatar of American Racism,” Marshall Project Journalist Says (June 10, 2020)
- Fresh Air podcast on NPR – Rethinking American Policing (June 10, 2020)
- Code Switch podcast on NPR – A Decade of Watching Black People Die (May 31, 2020)
- This American Life podcast – Here, Again (June 12, 2020)
Read:
- Nikole Hannah-Jones – "America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One" (Aug. 14, 2019)
- Olivia B. Waxman – 'What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?': The History of Frederick Douglass' Searing Independence Day Oration (Jun. 26, 2020)
- Danielle Cadet – "Your Black Colleagues May Look Like They’re Okay—Chances are They’re Not" (May 28, 2020)
Michael W. Kraus – "How White Managers Can Respond to Anti-Black Violence" (June 1, 2020) (note: this is primarily for non-Black managers) - Robin diAngelo – "White people assume niceness is the answer to racial inequality. It's not" (Jan. 16, 2019)
- Anna Kegler – “The Sugarcoated Language of White Fragility” (July 22, 2016)
- Spencer Kornhaber – “A Person Can’t Be ‘Diverse’” (January 26, 2016)
- Dafina-Lazarus Stewart – “Language of Appeasement” (March 30, 2017)
- Reni Eddo-Lodge – "Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race" (May 30, 2017)
- Kristen Rogers – “Dear anti-racist allies: Here’s how to respond to microaggressions" (June 6, 2020)
- Derald Wing Sue et. al. – “Disarming Racial Microaggressions: Microintervention Strategies for Targets, White Allies, and Bystanders” (2019)
- Jamil Smith – “Videos of Police Killings Are Numbing Us to the Spectacle of Black Death” (April 13, 2015)
- Ta-Nehisi Coates – "The Case for Reparations" (June 2014)
- A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez – "Why won’t society let Black girls be children?" (Jan. 28, 2020)
- Emily Bader et. al. – "Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys" (March 19, 2018)
James Baldwin – A Letter to My Nephew (Dec. 1, 1962) - Reggie Ugwu – "Lena Waithe's Art of Protest" (Dec. 2, 2019)
- Caroline Randall Williams – "You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument" (June 26, 2020)
- Southern Poverty Law Center – Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy" (Feb. 1, 2019)
- George Johnson – "White gay privilege exists all year, but it is particularly hurtful during Pride" (June 30, 2019)
- "Nine Black Artists and Cultural Leaders on Seeing and Being Seen" (June 23, 2020)
- Tamara Winfrey-Harris – "The Reckoning Will Be Incomplete Without Black Women and Girls" (Jun. 24, 2020)
- Noel King interviewing Ibram Kendi and Renée Watson – "'I See These Conversations As Protective' - Talking to kids about race" (June 16, 2020)
Poetry:
- Richard Wright - Between the World and Me
- Langston Hughs - Harlem
- June Jordan - 1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer
- Audre Lorde - Who Said It Was Simple
- Claudia Rankine - from Citizen: "You are in the dark, in the car..."
- Alice Walker - The world Rising
Watch:
- Megan Ming Francis – Let's get to the root of racial injustice, TEDTalks (March 21, 2016)
- Vernā Myers – How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly towards them, TEDTalks (Dec. 16, 2014)
- Kimberlé Crenshaw – The urgency of intersectionality, TEDTalks (October 2016)
- Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw – "Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color" (1994)
- Hair Love – Oscar winning short animated film (2019)
- D-L Stewart – Black Trans* Lives Matter, TEDTalks (March 2019)
- PBS News Hour – Teens talk about encounters with injustice and police violence, videos with discussion questions (June 9, 2020)
Additional Resources:
- Ibram X. Kendi – How to Be an Anti-Racist
- Ibram X. Kendi – Stamped from the Beginning
- Michelle Alexander – The New Jim Crow [Read the first chapter]
- Richard Rothstein – The Color of Law
- Mahzarin Banaji and Anthony Greenwald – Blindspot
- Mira Jacobs – Good Talk
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz – An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States
- Bryan Stevenson – Just Mercy
- Just Mercy - Documentary on HBO
- Jim Wallis – America’s Original Sin
- Ijeoma Oluo – So You Want to Talk About Race
- Ruth King – Mindful of Race
- Robin DiAngelo – White Fragility (2011) (note: this article is specifically addressed towards white people)
- Baratunde Thurston – How to deconstruct racism, one headline at a time, TEDTalks
- Clint Smith – Multiple TEDTalks
- PBS News Hour – Roxane Gay, Anna Deavere and Tay Anderson on the protestors' hope and despair
- act.tv – Systemic Racism Explained (short video)
- Brene Brown podcast – Interview with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist
- Brene Brown podcast – Interview with Austin Channing Brown on I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
- 13th (Netflix)
- American Son (Netflix)
- The Hate You Give (Cinemax)
- When They See Us (Netflix) [Learning companion from the production company]
- Dear White People (Netflix)
- If Beale St Could Talk (Hulu)