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Getting Started with Anti-Racism
This guide is not a handbook or roadmap; it is an introduction to research and literature in anti-racism specific to anti-Black and anti-Asian racism in the U.S., with particular emphasis on resources in Southeast Michigan and Ann Arbor. It includes information and resources specific to current dialogues within the University of Michigan community. The resources listed here are not exhaustive; they are tools for you to make use of in the process of your own anti-racist education. That said, we want to reinforce the fact that reading and self-education without action is not enough. There is much work to be done outside of this guide, but the work of dismantling white supremacy is difficult, ongoing, and part of that work is a commitment to continued learning and growth. It is a step toward anti-racism and further work and action is required on all of our parts.
This guide is intended for self-directed learning and to supplement course materials provided by faculty. Our hope is to alleviate the burden of BIPOC faculty and staff who are often overburdened with the work of caring and supporting their communities, in addition to their work as instructors, researchers, and administrators.
Anti-Racism Books & Recommended Reading
There are many texts that have been recommended for learning about anti-racism, and below we have selected a few items from our collections and available online. As mentioned previously, this is meant as a starting point, and we recommend referring to the numerous resources that have been circulated, and expanding these discussions with engagements with the literature, music, and films that center Black experience and life.
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle by ISBN: 9781608465651Publication Date: 2016-01-25In this collection of essays, interviews, and speeches, the renowned activist examines today's issues--from Black Lives Matter to prison abolition and more. Activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis has been a tireless fighter against oppression for decades. Now, the iconic author of Women, Race, and Class offers her latest insights into the struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world. Reflecting on the importance of black feminism, intersectionality, and prison abolitionism, Davis discusses the legacies of previous liberation struggles, from the Black Freedom Movement to the South African anti-Apartheid movement. She highlights connections and analyzes today's struggles against state terror, from Ferguson to Palestine. Facing a world of outrageous injustice, Davis challenges us to imagine and build a movement for human liberation. And in doing so, she reminds us that "freedom is a constant struggle."
Stamped from the Beginning by Call Number: E185.61 .K358 2016ISBN: 9781568584645Publication Date: 2016-04-12Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America--it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every great American thinker is complicit. In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-Black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities. In shedding light on this history, Stamped from the Beginning offers us the tools we need to expose racist thinking. In the process, he gives us reason to hope.
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by ISBN: 9781642591019Publication Date: 2019-09-20The eruption of mass protests in the wake of the police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City have challenged the impunity with which officers of the law carry out violence against Black people and punctured the illusion of a postracial America. The Black Lives Matter movement has awakened a new generation of activists. In this book, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation.
How to be an Antiracist by Call Number: E184 .A1 K344 2019ISBN: 9780525509295Publication Date: 2019Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America -- but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it. In this book, Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science, bringing it all together with an engaging personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. How to Be an Antiracist is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond an awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a truly just and equitable society.
Me and White Supremacy by ISBN: 9781728209807Publication Date: 2020-01-28This book challenges you to do the essential work of unpacking your biases, and helps white people take action and dismantle the privilege within themselves so that you can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too. Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey, complete with journal prompts, to do the necessary and vital work that can ultimately lead to improving race relations. This updated version of the critical text helps you take the work deeper by adding more historical and cultural contexts, sharing moving stories and anecdotes, and including expanded definitions, examples, and further resources, giving you the language to understand racism, and to dismantle your own biases.
The New Jim Crow by Call Number: HV9950 .A437 2010ISBN: 9781595586438Publication Date: 2012-01-16In a bold and innovative argument, a rising legal star shows readers how the mass incarceration of a disproportionate number of black men amounts to a devastating system of racial control. This is a terrifying reality that exists in the UK as much as in the US. Despite the triumphant dismantling of the Jim Crow laws, the system that once forced African-Americans into a segregated second-class citizenship still haunts and the criminal justice system still unfairly targets black men and deprives an entire segment of the population of their basic rights.
White Rage by ISBN: 1632864134Publication Date: 2017-09-05From the Civil War to our combustible present, White Rage reframes our continuing conversation about race, chronicling the powerful forces opposed to black progress in America--now in paperback with a new afterword by the author, acclaimed historian Carol Anderson. As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as "black rage," historian Carol Anderson wrote a remarkable op-ed in The Washington Post suggesting that this was, instead, "white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames," she argued, "everyone had ignored the kindling." Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African Americans have made advances towards full participation in our democracy, white reaction has fueled a deliberate and relentless rollback of their gains. The end of the Civil War and Reconstruction was greeted with the Black Codes and Jim Crow; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was met with the shutting down of public schools throughout the South while taxpayer dollars financed segregated white private schools; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 triggered a coded but powerful response, the so-called Southern Strategy and the War on Drugs that disenfranchised millions of African Americans while propelling presidents Nixon and Reagan into the White House, and then the election of America's first black President, led to the expression of white rage that has been as relentless as it has been brutal. Carefully linking these and other historical flashpoints when social progress for African Americans was countered by deliberate and cleverly crafted opposition, Anderson pulls back the veil that has long covered actions made in the name of protecting democracy, fiscal responsibility, or protection against fraud, rendering visible the long lineage of white rage. Compelling and dramatic in the unimpeachable history it relates, White Rage will add an important new dimension to the national conversation about race in America.
- In Defense of Looting by Vicky OsterweilA long-form essay on the relationship of looting to the work of anti-white supremacy and its connection to policing and capital. Published in the The New Inquiry in August 2014, following the murder of Michael Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.
My Body is a Confederate Monument by Publication Date: June 28, 2020A poet, Williams makes an impassioned argument contributing to the debate surrounding the removal of Confederate monuments and addresses the harm and violence done to enslaved Americans, and the legacy of slavery that exists in the bodies of Black Americans.
What is Owed by Publication Date: June 28, 2020If true justice and equally are ever to be achieved in the United States, the country must finally take seriously what it owes to black Americans
- #LivingWhileBlack: Blackness As Nuisance by Taja-Nia Y. Henderson and Jamila Jefferson-Jones, American University Law Review; vol 69 no. 3, 2020This article examines both the historical and modern incarnations of this “Blackness as Nuisance” tradition and argues that these efforts to distort property law norms arise from discomfort with racial integration and perceived Black physical mobility. The article concludes with the suggestion that policymakers carefully consider the intersections of property law and criminal law, and the historical origins of these types of incidents, in order to craft effective responses to these highly charged and potentially dangerous encounters.
- The 8:46 Project (Vice News)A recent project launched by Vice News, wherein the company demonstrates its commitment to "expand coverage and reporting on systemic racism across all of VICE’s brands including." George Floyd’s death at the hands of men sworn to serve and protect him was a literal and symbolic tragedy which has now reverberated around the world. As news of his death spread, sorrow, fatigue, and frustration filled the streets. And as people gathered, many chose to record what they were seeing unfold, just as Darnella Frazier did when she recorded that moment on May 25 as Floyd called out, "I can't breathe." Many of us have witnessed this chain reaction of events in pieces both distant and personal. This is a distilled representation of those pieces: fragments of hope, of horror, of hardship, and community action.
Recommended Viewing and Listening
Scholars, artists, and activists have also created a plethora of resources to help others learn about race in the U.S. and the ongoing anti-racism efforts, which pre-date the protests of 2020 by many decades. There are many more films to discover, but the recommended media featured here were selected because of their connection to U-M, or their introductory nature. All are available either through our catalog (requiring authentication) or openly on the Internet.
“Seven Last Words of the Unarmed” (video and text)
Dr. Eugene Rogers and the University of Michigan Men’s Glee Club collaborated with Joel Thompson to premiere and perform this piece in 2015. It includes educational discussion guides.
I Am Not Your Negro (film)
Raoul Peck's 2016 documentary about James Baldwin, based on the author's unfinished manuscript Remember This House, and narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. The film examines racism in the U.S. through Baldwin's recollection of Civil Rights leaders and his own incisive observations. More information about the film is available on the film's website.
Conversation with Ibram X. Kendi on Racial Equity During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic (video)
A recording of a conversation that happened live in May 2020 between Diane Yentel of the National Low Income Housing Coalition and bestselling author of How to be an Antiracist (2019), Dr. Ibram X. Kendi.
Pod Save The People (podcast)
A weekly action-based podcast series hosted by DeRay Mckesson that explores issues of social justice, politics, and culture, and often features interviews with special guests.
Codeswitch (podcast)
A podcast by National Public Radio (NPR) who hosted, produced, and edited by a multi-racial, multi-generational team of journalists that focuses on the intersections of race, ethnicity and culture.
Scene On Radio, Season 2 (podcast)
Scene on Radio is a podcast that tells stories exploring human experience and American society. Produced and hosted by John Biewen, Scene on Radio comes from the Center for Documentary Studies (CDS) at Duke University and is distributed by PRX. Season 2 Biewen and collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika explore the history and meaning of whiteness.
Anti-Racist Pedagogy
Esther Witte (PhD Candidate, English Language and Literature) and Dr. Whitney Peoples (Critical & Anti-Racist Teaching Specialist at the Center for Research on Learning & Teaching) have created an annotated bibliography on anti-racist pedagogy. It includes articles, essays, and book chapters, as well as a glossary of terms and guidelines for using these sources and approaches as part of your own teaching practice. The guide is intended as a living document, as new annotated sources will continue to be added.
Digital Collections
View primary materials materials related to race and abolition in the U.S. that have been digitized for public access. Additional digital collections from various U-M archives are also included in the following pages.
African American History Collection, 1729-1966 (bulk 1781-1865) (Clements Library)
This collection of digitized materials from the Clement's African American History Collection includes individual letters, documents, and other manuscript items relating to slavery, abolition movements, and various aspects of African American life, largely dating between 1781 and 1865.