Race & Activism in the 21st Century

Photo by Darrel Hunter

mandatory reading

BOOKS

Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad — Me and White Supremacy teaches listeners how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward — In this bestselling, widely lauded collection, Jesmyn Ward gathers our most original thinkers and writers to speak on contemporary racism and race, including Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Young, Claudia Rankine, and Honoree Jeffers. Envisioned as a response to The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin’s groundbreaking 1963 essay collection, these contemporary writers shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and imagine a better future.
Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism & School Closings on Chicago’s Southside by Eve Ewing — Rejecting the impulse to see education as disconnected from American life and politics, Ewing links the struggles of Chicago public schooling with the city’s notoriously racist housing practices. She peels back the seemingly anodyne messaging of reform ('school choice') and its ostensibly objective standards ('test scores') to reveal the insidious assumptions lying beneath.
Raising Our Hands: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find Our Place on the New Frontlines by Jenna Arnold — Consider Raising Our Hands your starting place, your Intro to Being a White Woman in Today's World freshman-year class. Jenna Arnold peels back the history that's been kept out of textbooks and the cultural norms that are holding us back, so we can start really listening to marginalized voices and doing our part to promote progress.
Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements by Charlene Carruthers — Drawing on Black intellectual and grassroots organizing traditions, including the Haitian Revolution, the US civil rights movement, and LGBTQ rights and feminist movements, Unapologetic challenges all of us engaged in the social justice struggle to make the movement for Black liberation more radical, more queer, and more feminist.
Algorithms of Oppression by Safiya Umoja Noble — Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities. Data discrimination is a real social problem; Noble argues that the combination of private interests in promoting certain sites, along with the monopoly status of a relatively small number of Internet search engines, leads to a biased set of search algorithms that privilege whiteness and discriminate against people of color, specifically women of color. (PDF available here)

ARTICLES & PDFs

Code of Silence by Jamie Kalven, a four-part investigation of a far-reaching criminal enterprise within the Chicago Police Department.
PDF: A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform — With detailed recommendations for governments and law enforcement agencies, this comprehensive report by the ACLU provides a detailed road map for ending the War on Marijuana and ensuring legalization efforts center racial justice.
PDF: Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith — This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research — specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth.' Smith deftly argues that the decolonization of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.
PDF: Twitter & Tear Gas: The Power & Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci — A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements' greatest strengths and frequent challenges