ANTI-RACISM RESOURCES

Podcasts

Can one person change the criminal justice system?
- Next Question with Katie Couric: As Founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. His incredible life story is also the subject of the new film "Just Mercy," based on his 2014 memoir, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx who also join Katie for a fascinating conversation about their experience bringing Stevenson’s story to life.

Still Processing: Featuring Cathy Park Hong
- The Asian-American poet wants to help women and people of color find healing — and clarity — in their rage. Hong's book of essays, “Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning," came out in February 2020, and it’s taken on new urgency with the rise in anti-Asian violence and discrimination during the pandemic.

Seeing White
- Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story. Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.

Code Switch
- From NPR: What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for. Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. We explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between. This podcast makes all of us part of the conversation — because we're all part of the story. Code Switch was named Apple Podcasts' first-ever Show of the Year in 2020.

Pod Save the People
- Organizer and activist DeRay Mckesson explores news, culture, social justice, and politics with analysis from Kaya Henderson, De’Ara Balenger, and others. Then he sits down for deep conversations with experts, influencers, and diverse local and national leaders. New episodes every Tuesday.

About Race with Reni Eddo-Lodge
- From the author behind the bestselling Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race comes a podcast that takes the conversation a step further. 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.

The Diversity Gap
- The Diversity Gap is for everyday people who want to pair their good intentions for diversity with true cultural change. Through thoughtful conversation and authentic storytelling, Host Bethaney Wilkinson will inspire and equip you to create the kind of culture you say you want: one where all people are seen, heard, respected, and given what they need to thrive.

Strange Fruit
- Jaison Gardner and Dr. Kaila Story talk race, gender, and LGBTQ issues, from politics to pop culture. A new episode every week, from Louisville Public Media.

Videos

Articles

Books

We encourage you to buy local and from Women Owned and BIPOC owned booksellers. Here are a few we recommend:

https://www.strongnations.com/

https://www.powells.com/

https://socialjusticebooks.org/

https://www.marcusbooks.com/

Half Price Books

https://www.bolerium.com/

Bound Together Books

https://ashaybythebay.com/

Underground Books

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, by Cathy Park Hong
- Poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir, cultural criticism, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism, this collection is vulnerable, humorous, and provocative--and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship, art and politics, identity and individuality, will change the way you think about our world.

How to be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi
- Historian and New York Times best-selling author Ibram X. Kendi uses a mix of personal experiences, history, and science to show how a person can go from being racist to anti-racist, and how we can all build a new anti-racist society.

We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation by Jeff Chang
- In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can't Stop Won't Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon' Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington D.C., the Great Migration to resurgent nativism. Chang explores the rise and fall of the idea of "diversity," the roots of student protest, changing ideas about Asian Americanness, and the impact of a century of racial separation in housing. He argues that resegregation is the unexamined condition of our time, the undoing of which is key to moving the nation forward to racial justice and cultural equity.

White Fragility, by Robin Diangelo
- In her book White Fragility, anti-racism educator Robin Diangelo examines how white defensive responses to conversations about race and racism reinforce inequality and prevent meaningful dialogue. She then offers ways white people can work against white fragility to engage in more constructive ways.

So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo
- Ijeomo Oluo’s New York Times best seller shows people of all races how to have constructive and useful conversations about race in America. It answers questions about confronting friends and family members while providing a comprehensive education on this country’s racist heritage.

Interior Chinatown by Willis Wu
- Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He’s a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy — the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. At least that is what he has been told, time and time again. Except by one person, his mother. Who says to him: be more.

Making of Asian America: A History, by Erika Lee
- The Making of Asian America shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life, from sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500 to the Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. No longer a "despised minority," Asian Americans are now held up as America's "model minorities" in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States.

All Our Relations, by Tanya Talaga
- Bestselling and award-winning author Tanya Talaga argues that the aftershocks of cultural genocide have resulted in a disturbing rise in youth suicides in Indigenous communities in Canada and beyond. She examinees the tragic reality of children feeling so hopeless they want to die, of kids perishing in clusters, forming suicide pacts, or becoming romanced by the notion of dying — a phenomenon that experts call “suicidal ideation.” She also looks at the rising global crisis, as evidenced by the high suicide rates among the Inuit of Greenland and Aboriginal youth in Australia. Finally, she documents suicide prevention strategies in Nunavut, Seabird Island, and Greenland; Facebook’s development of AI software to actively link kids in crisis with mental health providers; and the push by First Nations leadership in Northern Ontario for a new national health strategy that could ultimately lead communities towards healing from the pain of suicide.

American Indian Stories, by Zitkala-Sa
- A groundbreaking Dakota author and activist chronicles her refusal to assimilate into nineteenth-century white society and her mission to preserve her culture—with an introduction by Layli Long Soldier, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Whereas.

Me and White Supremacy, by Layla F. Saad
- What started as an Instagram challenge and a downloadable anti-racist workbook encouraging people to examine their own privilege and racist behaviors now comes in book form with historical context, expanded definitions, and more resources. It has been widely recommended for white people who want to make change but don’t know where to start.

Eloquent Rage, by Brittany Cooper
- Author and professor of Gender and Africana Studies at Rutgers University, Brittney Cooper uses her own experience to talk about the power of black female rage and how it can drive revolution and change the world.

Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth, by Dána-Ain Davis
- Dána-Ain Davis looks into why black women have higher rates of premature birth and higher maternal death rates than other women in America. She places racial differences in birth outcomes into a historical context, revealing that ideas about reproduction and race today have been influenced by the legacy of ideas dating back to slavery.

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson
- Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson pulls back the American myth of meritocracy and reveals a rigidly hierarchical caste system with roots that date back to Jamestown. A masterly examination of the deeply rooted systems of power encoded in every facet of American life, and a thought-provoking exploration of the parallels between the American caste system and those of India and Nazi Germany. Caste is necessary reading for anyone looking to understand where we are, where we have been, and where we need to go from here.

Killing Rage: Ending Racism, by bell hooks
- One of our country's premier cultural and social critics, bell hooks has always maintained that eradicating racism and eradicating sexism must go hand in hand. These twenty-three essays are written from a black and feminist perspective, and they tackle the bitter difficulties of racism by envisioning a world without it. They address a spectrum of topics having to do with race and racism in the United States: psychological trauma among African Americans; friendship between black women and white women; anti-Semitism and racism; and internalized racism in movies and the media.

A Black Women's History of the United States, by Diana Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
- In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today.

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt
- How do we talk about bias? How do we address racial disparities and inequities? What role do our institutions play in creating, maintaining, and magnifying those inequities? What role do we play? With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we need to face one of the biggest and most troubling issues of our time. She exposes racial bias at all levels of society--in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and criminal justice system. Yet she also offers us tools to address it. Eberhardt shows us how we can be vulnerable to bias but not doomed to live under its grip. Racial bias is a problem that we all have a role to play in solving.

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde
- In this charged collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, reflecting struggle but ultimately offering messages of hope.

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, by Bryan Stevenson
- “Why do we want to kill all the broken people? What is wrong with us, that we think a thing like that can be right?” If you feel called to learn about criminal justice, but don’t necessarily have a firm understanding of how the legal system operates, Just Mercy is exactly the book to read. Not only is it totally accessible, but the stance from which Bryan Stevenson writes is so utterly compassionate that, as he sheds light on example after example of wrongful imprisonment, the question of whether criminals deserve mercy completely dissolves and instead becomes a summons for a more humane and equitable society.

How Long 'til Black Future Month?, by N.K. Jemisin
- N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, by Resmaa Menakem
- The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans--our police.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein
- In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation — that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation — the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments — that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

FATAL INVENTION: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-First Century, By Dorothy Roberts
- Roberts, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, shows unequivocally that all people are indeed created equal, despite political and economic special interests that keep trying to persuade us otherwise.

WEST INDIAN IMMIGRANTS: A Black Success Story?, By Suzanne Model
- Some of the same forces have led Americans to believe that the recent success of black immigrants from the Caribbean proves either that racism does not exist or that the gap between African-Americans and other groups in income and wealth is their own fault. But Model’s meticulous study, emphasizing the self-selecting nature of the West Indians who emigrate to the United States, argues otherwise, showing me, a native of racially diverse New York City, how such notions — the foundation of ethnic racism — are unsupported by the facts.

THE CONDEMNATION OF BLACKNESS: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, By Khalil Gibran Muhammad
- “Black” and “criminal” are as wedded in America as “star” and “spangled.” Muhammad’s book traces these ideas to the late 19th century, when racist policies led to the disproportionate arrest and incarceration of blacks, igniting urban whites’ fears and bequeathing tenaciously racist stereotypes.

THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, By Zora Neale Hurston
- Of course, the black body exists within a wider black culture — one Hurston portrayed with grace and insight in this seminal novel. She defies racist Americans who would standardize the cultures of white people or sanitize, eroticize, erase or assimilate those of blacks.

Websites

Resources for Parents

Books for Children

Watercress, by Andrea Wang
- Inspired by her childhood, in Watercress, author Andrea Wang tells the story of a daughter of Chinese immigrants moving to a small Ohio town. The story's narrator is painfully aware of the differences between her and her primarily white classmates. Her complicated feelings about her heritage come to a head when her parents stop by the road to dig for watercress, which they eat for dinner that night. At first embarrassed, as the protagonist learns more about her family's history, she comes to a different understanding of both the meal of watercress she shares with her family and her Chinese heritage.

Mommy’s Khimar, by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow
- A young girl plays dress up with her mother’s headscarves, feeling her mother’s love with every one she tries on. Charming and vibrant illustrations showcase the beauty of the diverse and welcoming community in this portrait of a young Muslim American girl’s life.

Intersection Allies: We Make Room for All by Chelsea Johnson, LaToya Council, and Carolyn Choi
- The story introduces nine children who defend and welcome each other’s differences, ranging from gender fluidity to disability to language.

Freedom River, by Doreen Rappaport
- The true story of Freedom River follows John Parker (1827–1900), a former enslaved man who lived in the free state of Ohio and crossed the Ohio River to help free enslaved people from Kentucky. “It involves a family escaping to freedom and beginning their journey on the Underground Railroad. It is not graphic but it does portray the mistreatment of people of color, which always ignites the conversation of ‘why’ or ‘how could people do this.”

I Am Enough by Grace Byers
- I Am Enough is a lyrical story about a Black girl making her presence known in the world, announcing, “Like the bird, I’m here to fly and soar high over everything.” The story celebrates the things that make people different and wonderful.

Eyes that Kiss in the Corners, by Joanna Ho
- Author and educator Joanna Ho is the daughter of Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants. In her debut picture book Eyes that Kiss in the Corners, she gives a gorgeous and lyrical statement of self-love that celebrates Asian-shaped eyes and family heritage. "I have eyes that kiss in the corners and glow like warm tea," the child narrator proclaims, just like her mama, her amah (grandmother), and her little sister Mei-Mei.

Wishes, by Muon Thi Van
- With Wishes, Vietnamese American author Mượn Thị Văn writes a poignant, poetic ode based on actual events in her childhood. In this hopeful and moving picture book, a little girl tells the story of a Vietnamese family journeying by boat to a new country and all the unspoken wishes that accompany such a harrowing and life-altering journey. Văn's simple and lyrical prose is paired with award-winning artist Victo Ngai's stunning and intricate illustrations.

When We Were Alone, by David A. Robertson
- In this story, a Cree girl spends time with her kókom (grandmother) and learns how she held onto her family and culture while forcefully separated from her people.

Lailah's Lunchbox, by Reem Faruqi
- Lailah is in a new school in a new country, thousands of miles from her old home, and missing her old friends. When Ramadan begins, she is excited that she is finally old enough to participate in the fasting but worried that her classmates won't understand why she doesn't join them in the lunchroom.

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, by Nikole Hannah-Jones
- The 1619 Project’s lyrical picture book in verse chronicles the consequences of slavery and the history of Black resistance in the United States, thoughtfully rendered by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and Newbery honor-winning author Renée Watson.