LibGuides: Anti-Racism &amp; BlackLivesMatter Resources: Antiracist Resources

Syllabi

How to be an Antiracist, Ibrahm X. Kendi

This Guide was developed as part of a Spring 2020 Library discussion series on the book How To Be An Antiracist. This is a work in progress! The syllabus portion of the guide includes additional works by the author, as well as lists of related books, articles, and films for further learning. Access the syllabus and its chapter resources via the menu on the left side of the guide.

Intro to Critical Race Theory, Adrienne Keene

This graduate seminar will explore the foundations and central tenets of Critical Race Theory, from its origins in Critical Legal Studies, to current applications, debates, and evolutions, with particular attention to CRT’s intersections with the field of American Studies. We will also bring in CRT “offshoots” such as TribalCrit, LatCrit, AsianCrit, and DisCrit. CRT posits that racism is endemic to society, but that we must also remain committed to social justice and praxis. How do we navigate these tensions, use CRT to provide a toolkit for navigating scholarship, and work toward social change in the realms of race and racism?

Reparations Syllabus, adapted from “Reparations, Repatriation, and Redress” symposium, University of Minnesota

This syllabus is not meant to provide an exhaustive list of sources on reparations–this is an evolving document and we welcome suggestions for additional sources to add. Reparations demands can be material, as in demands for land or money, symbolic, as in public apologies, or cultural, as in the replacement of public monuments tied to violence or injustice. Recognizing the diverse ways in which individuals and groups reckon with the aftermath of collective trauma, this syllabus is meant to provide an introduction to some of the major debates and texts in the field.

York Library has put together several featured collections of print & online materials to highlight specific resources, including anti-racist materials. You can browse the collection on race and anti-racism and even search within the collection to find related books, ebooks, and videos.

Reading Lists

Anti-Racism: A Starter Booklist from Library Journal

Anti-Racism Resources list compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker, Alyssa Klein

Anti-Racism Resources for All Ages a project by the Augusta Baker Chair

Black Liberation Reading List from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Black Lives Matter Reading List by Feminist Press

Haymarket Books Against Policing and Mass Incarceration

Let's Do the Work from Brooklyn Public Library

Reading for Racial Justice from Manifold (available free of charge for a short time)

Reading Towards Abolition: A Reading List on Policing, Rebellion, and the Criminalization of Blackness compiled by the Abusable Past Collective

Teaching an Uprising: Readings on Race and Democracy by Trish Kahle

Books

The following book titles are linked to York Library's WorldCat, which will allow you to find any of our books online or in print. You can also place ILL requests for any items.

You can also search for any book title in the search box below to find York Library books & ebooks:

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New Press, 2010.

Anderson, Carol. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. Bloomsbury, 2017.

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Modern Library, 1995.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Spiegel & Grau, 2017.

Cooper, Brittney C. Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. St. Martin’s Press, 2019.

Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? Seven Stories Press, 2003.

Davis, Angela Y., and Frank Barat. Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement. Haymarket Books, 2016.

DiAngelo, Robin J. White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Beacon Press, 2018.

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk; Essays and Sketches. A. C. McClurg & Co., 1920.

Eddo-Lodge, Reni. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, 2004.

Forman, James. Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Harris-Perry, Melissa V. Sister citizen: shame, stereotypes, and Black women in America. Yale University Press, 2011.

hooks, bell. Killing Rage: Ending Racism. Henry Holt and Company, 2006.

Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. One World, 2019.

Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the beginning : the definitive history of racist ideas in America. Nation Books, 2016. (A free audiobook is currently available on Spotify.)

Khan-Cullors, Patrisse. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. St. Martin’s Press, 2018.

Laymon, Kiese. Heavy: An American Memoir. Scribner, 2018.

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 2007.

Lowery, Wesley. They Can’t Kill Us All: The Story of the Struggle for Black Lives. Back Bay Books, 2016.

McClure, Stephanie M. & Harris, Cherise A. Getting real about race: hoodies, mascots, model minorities, and other conversations. SAGE, 2015.

Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Harvard University Press, 2019.

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk about Race. Seal Press, 2019.

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Graywolf Press, 2014.

Ritchie, Andrea J. Invisible No More: Police Violence against Black Women and Women of Color. Beacon Press, 2017.

Ross, Lawrence C. Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses. Griffin, 2017.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017.

Saad, Layla F. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. Sourcebooks, 2020.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. One World, 2020. (Also available as an adaptation for young adults.)

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Haymarket Books, 2016.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, editor. How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective. Haymarket Books, 2017.

Thompson, Heather Ann. Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy. Vintage Books, 2017.

Vitale, Alex S. The End of Policing. Verso, 2017. (currently available as a free ebook download from Verso)

Walker, Anders. The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America. Yale University Press, 2018.

Ward, Jesmyn, ed. The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race. Scribner, 2017.

Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Vintage Books, 2011.

Research Collections

Many publishers are offering free open access to research collections in order to amplify Black critical scholarship and to support researchers in their future work, educators in discussions on systemic racism, and policymakers and community organizers in their efforts to create an equal society.

Educating for Black Lives: Readings and Resources for Antiracist Education, a new collection of 55 readings and 20 multimedia resources including videos, lesson plans, workshop activities, thought pieces, and more from Routledge

Racial Equity Tools from the Center for Assessment and Policy Development

Racial Justice, Policing, and Protest from Annual Reviews

Reading for Racial Justice from Manifold (available free of charge for a short time)

Structural Racism and Police Violence from SAGE journals

Library Study Guides

Anti-Racism Resources by Libby Conyner at Carol Grotnes Belk Library. This guide provides some resources related to the histories of racism, its continuing legacies, and how we can work to dismantle white supremacy.

Anti-Racist Pedagogy Guide, a joint effort of the University of Southern California Libraries and the Anti-Racist Pedagogy Organizing Committee, USC. This guide provides resources for developing anti-racist pedagogical strategies and syllabi.

Disrupting Whiteness in Libraries and Librarianship: A Reading List by Karla J. Strand, University of Wisconsin. This bibliography contains citations and links to resources focused on race, racism, and disrupting whiteness and white supremacy in libraries. Particular emphasis is placed on the field of library and information science and librarianship as a profession.

Research Guide to Black Librarianship at the Schomburg Center by Barrye Brown and Rhonda Evans, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This guide documents the wealth of resources across the Schomburg Center's five research divisions that document Black librarianship and highlights key collections and works.

Streaming Videos

The following videos are available to stream via York Library, and will require you to sign in using your CUNY login if you are off-campus:

I Am Not Your Negro: James Baldwin and Race in America

In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends--Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript. Filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished in a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.

bell hooks: Cultural Criticism & Transformation

In this two-part video, bell hooks extensively illustrated with many of the images under analysis, she makes a compelling argument for the transformative power of cultural criticism. In Part One, bell hooks discusses the theoretical foundations and positions that inform her work (such as the motives behind representations, as well as their power in social and cultural life). bell hooks also explains why she insists on using the phrase "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" to describe the interlocking systems of domination that define our reality. In Part Two, she demonstrates the value of cultural studies in concrete analysis through such subjects as the OJ Simpson case, Madonna, Spike Lee, and Gangsta rap. The aim of cultural analysis, she argues, should be the production of enlightened witnesses - audiences who engaged with the representations of cultural life knowledgeably and vigilantly.

Race: The Power of Illusion

The division of the world's peoples into distinct groups - "red," "black," "white" or "yellow" peoples - has became so deeply embedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet, that's exactly what this provocative, new three-hour series by California Newsreel claims. Race: The Power of Illusion questions the very idea of race as innate biology, suggesting that a belief in inborn racial difference is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet race still matters. Just because race doesn't exist in biology doesn't mean it isn't very real, helping shape life chances and opportunities.

Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders: Women of the Civil Rights Movement

In 1965, when three women walked into the US House of Representatives in Washington D.C., they had come a very long way. Neither lawyers nor politicians, they were ordinary women from Mississippi, and descendants of African slaves. They had come to their country’s capital seeking civil rights, the first black women to be allowed in the senate chambers in nearly 100 years.

A missing chapter in our nation’s record of the Civil Rights movement, this powerful documentary reveals the movement in Mississippi in the 1950’s and 60’s from the point of view of the courageous women who lived it – and emerged as its grassroots leaders. Their living testimony offers a window into a unique moment when the founders’ promise of freedom and justice passed from rhetoric to reality for all Americans.

White Like Me

White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today.