Here’s how we can start…

Listen.

Listen deeply to what the voices in your community share, especially when their experiences are different from yours. Listen without judgment, and without becoming defensive.

Learn.

Find a few antiracism educators to learn from. When you find one or two that resonate with you, follow their programs the way they intend you to and learn from them. Learn about the history of systemic racism and its impact on society today.

Take Action.

Then, take action. To change the inequality that is deeply embedded within our systems, we must consciously choose to take action to change how these systems operate. Recognize that this is work in progress and you will likely make mistakes. Don’t let the fear of making a mistake be an excuse for inaction.

Take Action

• 97 Actions White People Can Do for Racial Justice  
• 18 Things White People Should Know/Do Before Discussing Racism, by Tiffanie Drayton & Joshua McCarther

• Contact your local, state, and federal representatives on issues: obtain contact info here

• Support or Donate
  • National Organizations
    • NAACP
    • Movement for Black Lives
    • National Bail Out
    • Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ)
    • MoveOn
    • ACLU
    • National Diversity Council
    • Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
    • Parents, Family & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG)
    • The Advocates for Human Rights
    • The Anti-Defamation League

• • Local Organizations
    • Support Black-owned restaurants.
    • Youth Alive (Oakland)
    • People’s Breakfast Oakland (Oakland)
    • The East Oakland Collective (Oakland)
    • Black Earth Farms (Oakland)
    • National Lawyers Guild, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (San Francisco)
    • Occur (Oakland)
    • Black-owned restaurants, pop-ups and caterers in the Bay Area: A crowd-sourced directory of Black-owned food businesses that are open right now.

Books, Articles, and Blogs

• Resources

  • A not-at-all-comprehensive list of resources for Black freelancers
  • RacismReview: RacismReview is intended to provide a credible and reliable source of information for journalists, students and members of the general public who are seeking solid evidence-based research and analysis of “race,” racism, ethnicity, and immigration issues.
  • The Marshall Project: A nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom covering America’s criminal justice system.
  • Atlanta Black Star: daily Black news and information for and about African-Americans, the Diaspora, and the world.
  • The Root: Black News, Opinions, Politics and Culture.
  • Colorlines: A daily news site featuring investigative reporting and news analysis from the perspective of communities of color.
  • Judaism and Race: A site that asks, “How do we expand our image of Jews to include people of color, and how should Jews deal with systemic racism in America?”
  • Guidance for Reporting and Writing About Racism, provided by Syracuse University on their blog. Contains five considerations when reporting and writing about race and racism.
  • 135 Racial Equity Resources For Education, Professional & Community Development, Health, And Civil Rights

• History

  • The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
  • Overcoming Bias by Dr. Tiffany Jana.
    This book does a fantastic job pointing out the complexity of bias and shares helpful exercises and activities to help people counteract the bias in which we all have to intentionally work to overcome.
  • A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
  • Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
  • A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, Ronald Takaki

• Point of View

  • White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin Di Angelo
  • President Obama: How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
  • Creating a Culture of Equity, by Brenda B. Asare, President and CEO, The Alford Group
  • Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein
  • The Atlantic: Case for Reparations, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • NY Times: Our Biased Brains, by Nicholas Kristof
  • 7 Reasons Why ‘Colorblindness’ Contributes to Racism Instead of Solves It, by Jon Greenberg
  • Why Do White People Think People of Color Are Obligated to Teach Them About Race?, by Kali Holloway
  • What White Folks and Non-Black POC Need to Understand About Systemic Racism, by Porscha Coleman
  • NY Times: Does Teacher Diversity Matter in Student Learning?, by Claire Cain Miller
  • NY Times: Who’s Afraid of a White Minority?, by Thomas B. Edsall

• Fiction

  • A Lesson before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines
  • Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Videos, Podcasts, and TED Talks

• Documentary

  • The 13th: Ava Duvernay’s Netflix documentary gets to the heart of some of the root causes of racial inequality and injustice.
  • The PBS Series: Race — The Power of an Illusion
  • The PBS Series: Unnatural Causes… is inequality making us sick?
  • Season 2 of the SceneOnRadio podcast is an eye-opening exploration of Whiteness in America. This Peabody-nominated podcast from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University features sound bites from one of the Racial Equity Institute’s trainings.
  • New York Times Magazine 1619 Project created to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the center of our national narrative
  • Video Series: What Is Systemic Racism?  (Race Forward)
  • “How Racist Are You?” – The Brown Eye-Blue Eye Experiment by Jane Elliott

• Personal points of view

  • On Social Contract: Trever Noah video
  • Intersection (The New Republic) – Host Jamil Smith discusses race, gender, and all the ways we identify.
  • Code Switch (NPR) –  A team of journalists fascinated by the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity and culture, how they play out in our lives and communities, and how all of this is shifting.
  • Scene on Radio – Scene on Radio is a documentary show that asks, How’s it going in our society and culture? Seeing White, explores the history and meaning of Whiteness in American life.
  • Ferguson Response Network – Support for creating lasting racial equality through sustained civil disobedience
  • About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge – Featuring key voices from the last few decades of anti-racist activism, About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge looks at the recent history that lead to the politics of today.
  • W. Kamau Bell: What Every American Needs to Know About White Supremacy

• TED Talks

  • How to Overcome our Biases? Walk Boldly Toward Them (Verna Myers)
  • We Need to Talk About an Injustice (Bryan Stevenson)
  • Color Blind or Color Brave (Mellody Hobson)
  • The Fight Against Sex Slavery (Sunitha Krishnan)
  • A Thousand Times No (Bahia Shehab)
  • How to Combat Modern Slavery (Kevin Bales)
  • America’s Native Prisoners of War (Aaron Huey)
  • Fifty Shades of Gay (iO Tillet Wright)
  • Unlock the intelligence, passion, greatness of girls (Leymah Gbowee)
  • A Tale of Two Americas. And the mini-mart where they collided (Anand Giridharadas)
  • How To Stop Torture  (Karen Tse)
  • How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race (Jay Smooth)

Training

• The MSW@USC Diversity Toolkit: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power and Privilege
  This workshop is organized as an activity where the majority of the outcomes are learned from the experiences and knowledge of the individuals participating rather than a teacher/student relationship.
• The National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian
  Newly launched portal on Talking About Race includes a toolkit for taking action to end racial inequities in our daily lives. It outlines how we all have a role to play, how being antiracist is different for white people than for people of color, that all racial groups struggle under white supremacy, and for everyone it is an ongoing practice and process.
• Is Everyone Really Equal?, Ozlem Sensory & Robin DiAngelo
  This is the new edition of the award-winning guide to social justice education. Accessible to students from high school through graduate school, this comprehensive resource includes many new features such as discussion of contemporary activism. The text includes many user-friendly features, examples, and vignettes to not just define but illustrate key concepts.
• Harvard Implicit Bias Test
  The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about.
• Racial Equity Tools:
  Offers tools, research, tips, curricula and ideas for people who want to increase their own understanding and to help those working toward justice at every level – in systems, organizations, communities and the culture at large.
• Human Rights Approach to Social JusticeTo strengthen the capacity to use human rights to combat entrenched poverty, discrimination, and injustice, The Advocates for Human Rights developed a training and accompanying manual entitled Discover Human Rights: A Human Rights Approach to Social Justice. This manual, intended for social justice advocates, provides concrete steps for integrating international human rights principles into their work.