Anti-Racism Resources
“Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy, and liberation.”
“Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.”
Videos:
Hesapa – A Landback Film (5 mins)
A 5-minute interview on Democracy Now with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz (Historian/Author of “An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States”)
Why Indigenous Landback is a Feminist Issue – a panel discussion with Cutcha Risling Baldy, Corrina Gould, Laura Harjo, and moderator Caitlin “Katie” Keliiaa through the Clayman Instiute for Gender Research at Stanford University (Nov 2023)
The History of White People in America (A series of animated, musical short films – you can watch the first 3 shorts via the link – 18 mins total)
What Racism Is – Toni Morrison
The Traumatic Roots of White Body Supremacy and Racism in America – Resmaa Menakem
Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome – Dr. Joy Degruy
Angela Davis – “Freedom is a Constant Struggle” Keynote 2/23/2021
Loretta Ross – “Don’t Call People Out, Call Them In” (TED Talk)
Birth of a White Nation – Dr. Jacqueline Battalora
James Baldwin on the Black Experience in America
Spotlight on Black Trauma and Policing – MPR Interview with Dr. Brittany Lewis, Resmaa Menakem and Justin Terrell
The Importance of Critical Thinking – bell hooks (1997)
Talking to Your Kids About Race with Dr. Ibram X, Kendi (3 min)
“The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism – the founding state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery and a policy of genocide and land theft.”
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, from her book "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States"
“We have to constantly critique imperialist white supremacist patriarchal culture because it is normalized by mass media and rendered unproblematic.”
–bell hooks
Books:
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth – The Red Nation
Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo (poetry)
My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies – Resmaa Menakem
Me and White Supremacy – Layla Saad
Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without a Bullhorn) – Omkari L. Williams
How to be an Antiracist – Ibram X. Kendi
White Tears / Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color – Ruby Hamad
Liberated to the Bone – Susan Raffo
A Black Women’s History of the United States – Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning – Cathy Park Hong
From Minor Feelings: “Innocence is…not just an “absence of knowledge” but “an active state of repelling knowledge,” embroiled in the statement “Well, I don’t see race” where “I” eclipses the “seeing.” Innocence is both a privilege and a cognitive handicap, a sheltered unknowingness that, once protracted into adulthood, hardens into entitlement.” –Cathy Park Hong
Birth of a White Nation: The Invention of White People and Its Relevance Today – Jacqueline Battalora
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower – Brittney Cooper
Between the World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates writes this book for his 15 year old son about what it’s like to grow up black in America.
“One of the great virtues of Coates’ book is that it is not addressed to white people. The usual hedging and filtering and softening and overall distortion that seems to happen automatically — even unconsciously — when black people attempt to speak about race to white people in public is absent.” (excerpt from a NYT review)
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – Richard Rothstein
Homegoing – Yaa Gyasi
“We believe the one who has power. He is the one who gets to write the story. So when you study history, you must ask yourself, Whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story too. From there you get a clearer, yet still imperfect, picture.” –Yaa Gyasi, from Homegoing
Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde
Killing Rage: Ending Racism – bell hooks
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective – edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship and Community – Mia Birdsong
We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice – adrienne maree brown
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons From Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall
The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy – this book is a global, intersectional feminist manifesto to eradicate hetero-patriarchy and white supremacy
It’s Not You, It’s Capitalism: Why It’s Time to Break Up and How to Move On – Malaika Jabali
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care – Mariame Kaba + Kelly Hayes
“History is not the past, it is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history.”
–James Baldwin
Podcasts / Audio Series:
The Red Nation Podcast – “The Red Nation Podcast features discussions on Indigenous history, politics, and culture from a left perspective.”
All My Relations – “All My Relations is a team of folks who care about representations, and how Native peoples are represented in mainstream media. Each episode invites guests to delve into a different topic facing Native peoples today as we keep it real, play games, laugh a lot, and even cry sometimes.”
Media Indigena – “Since its launch back in 2010, my goal with MEDIA INDIGENA has been to share the stories I wanted to see and hear as an Indigenous person, in the way I wanted to see and hear them.” –Rick Harp, host of this current affairs roundtable podcast
Finding Our Way – with Somatics Practitioner, writer and teacher, Prentis Hemphill, featuring guests such as adrienne maree brown, Sonya Renee Taylor, Mia Birdsong, Patrisse Cullors, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Tarana Burke and more
In Season 2, Episode 12 of Finding Our Way, organizer and abolitionist, Miriame Kabe is interviewed by Prentis. She speaks at the end of the interview on the discipline of hope. Here’s the transcript.
How to Survive the End of the World – with activist and visionary, adrienne maree brown, and her sister, Autumn Brown. In this episode, the sisters speak with Miriame Kabe on transformative justice, how to address harm and grow beyond it. A phenomenal conversation!
Octavia’s Parables – a podcast diving into Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents books hosted by adrienne maree brown and Toshi Reagon
Green Dreamer – I recommend this episode featuring Mia Birdsong on “Deepening Our Interdependence with Community”
1619 Project – hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones
Intersectionality Matters! with Kimberlé Crenshaw founder of the “Say Her Name” campaign
The Fire Still Burning on NPR’s Throughline interviewing Eddie Glaude (47 mins): This conversation gets into some of the most urgent lessons we can learn from James Baldwin, whose life and writing illuminate so much about what it would really mean for the United States to reckon with its race problem.
Scene on Radio (Season 2: Seeing White)
Nice White Parents (5-part audio series)
Still Processing (this link leads to the episode titled “Wake”)
“How then can US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? …That process rightfully starts by honoring the treaties the United States made with Indigenous nations, by restoring all sacred sites, starting with the Black Hills and including most federally held parks and land and all stolen sacred items and body parts, and by payment of sufficient reparations for the reconstruction and expansion of Native nations. In the process, the continent will be radically reconfigured, physically and psychologically. For the future to be realized, it will require extensive educational programs and the full support and active participation of the descendants of settlers, enslaved Africans, and colonized Mexicans, as well as immigrant populations.”
–Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, from her book "An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States"
Articles / Essays:
Land Reparations Indigenous Solidarity Action Guide
Indigenous Solidarity Network – Rethinking “Thanksgiving” Toolkit
Susan Raffo – Dealing with the Original Wounds
Resmaa Menakem – When White Bodies Say, “Tell Me What to Do” (Psychology Today, May 25, 2021)
10 Ways White Supremacy Wounds White People: A Tale of Mutuality
Susan Raffo – Helping White Men Lose Control
adrienne maree brown – Additional Recommendations for Us Right Now from a Future
adrienne maree brown – Love Looks Like Accountability
Layla Saad (author of Me & White Supremacy) – “I need to talk to spiritual white women about white supremacy:”
adrienne maree brown – a word for white people, in two parts
Ta-Nehisi Coates – The Case for Reparations
Audre Lorde – The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism
To white folks:
“I don’t want you to understand me better, I want you to understand yourselves. Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it has required your ignorance.”
An excerpt from the book, “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies” (p. 4-5) by Resmaa Menakem:
“For the past three decades, we’ve earnestly tried to address white-body supremacy in America with reason, principles and ideas – using dialogue, forums, discussions, education and mental training. But, the widespread destruction of Black bodies continues. And, some of the ugliest destruction originates with our police.
Why is there such a chasm between our well-intentioned attempts to heal and the ever-growing number of dark-skinned bodies who are killed or injured, sometimes by police officers?
It’s not that we’ve been lazy or insincere. But, we’ve focused our efforts in the wrong direction. We’ve tried to teach our brains to think better about race. But, white-body supremacy doesn’t live in our thinking brains. It lives and breathes in our bodies.
Our bodies have a form of knowledge that is different from our cognitive brains. This knowledge is typically experienced as a felt sense of constriction or expansion, pain or ease, energy or numbness. Often this knowledge is stored in our bodies as wordless stories about what is safe and what is dangerous. The body is where we fear, hope and react; where we constrict and release; and where we reflexively fight, flee or freeze. If we are to upend the status quo of white-body supremacy, we must begin with our bodies.”
Somatic Practitioners:
My partner, Daniel Gaustad, is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner who works with individuals, couples and groups through an embodied systemic lens.
And, this is an extensive list of “Healing Practitioners“ that Susan Raffo created, many of whom are somatic practitioners. Raffo writes, “This list is broken down between BIPOC practitioners and white practitioners. When I have the information, I share if the person is queer/trans or just queer recommended, if they take insurance, if they speak any language other than or in addition to English (at this point, everyone on this list speaks English and sometimes additional languages), and if they have experience with people with disabilities. Trans/nonbinary folks have an asterisk next to their name if this is part of their public identities and/or I have asked for their consent…”
“Healing is not just about what we experience in the present, it’s also about how we understand the past, how we name our histories and frame the times in which we live.”
Workshops:
Finding Freedom: White Women Taking On Our Own White Supremacy with Kari Points and Evangeline Weiss
About Finding Freedom: Finding Freedom is an experiential, somatics-based workshop series that guides white women through an examination of the intersection of white womanhood and white supremacy and trains them to show up constructively for multiracial, people of color-led organizing.
An episode on Francesca Maximé’s podcast “Re-rooted” featuring Kari Points and Evangeline Weiss: “White Women Finding Freedom”
Hollaback! Free Bystander Intervention Trainings (Ex: To Stop Anti-Asian/American Harassment and Xenophobia +/or To Stop Police Sponsored Violence and Anti-Black Racist Harassment)
Somatic Abolitionism with Resmaa Menakem
More Resources:
Sign up to receive Anti-Racism Daily emails
Layla Saad’s list of resources (listed at end of article)
Anti-racism resources for white people
Susan Raffo’s Recommendations – “Sites I love” + Healing Practitioners Resource List