^{Part 7 in my series “On microaggressions, privilege, and systemic racism: A resource for white people”}

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Videos and podcasts about racism, collected

Sometimes, it's just not possible to sit down and watch documentaries. But listening to them is also beneficial, even if it means missing out on the visual information.

To make this easier, I've collected links to the videos and podcasts in this list and posted them here.

Resources

• The Organizing White Men for Collective Liberation website includes this reading list.

• If Radical In Progress offers free downloadable study guides. (As I write this, the site offers guides to 21 books, ranging from Kimberlé Crenshaw's Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex to Rashid Khalidi's The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. "These study guides will never ... capture the full wisdom that comes from reading the original texts. If a study guide interests you, [the site recommends that] you purchase the book in question and take your self-education further.")

• Goodreads’ Breaking Brown Book Reads “is a political program created by political commentator and co-founder of the ADOS (American Descendant of Slaves) movement, Yvette Carnell.” The link will take you to an extensive list of books.

• Resources to Support Black Owned Businesses, Authors & More, a Google doc uploaded June 19, 2020 by J. Maggio.

• Do the work: an anti-racist reading list, by Layla F Saad, The Guardian, Jun. 3, 2020.

• Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938, Library of Congress Digital Collections. (This incredible collection "contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration." The easily-accessed, downloadable material is enhanced by a collection of articles and essays.)

• Lynchings — a list of resources, posted by Kat.

• Lest We Forget: African-American Military History, by Historian, Author, and Veteran Bennie McRae Jr., a page of the Hampton University website. (A rich selection of topics, including African American Radio, Agriculture, Current Organizations, Education, Genealogy, Law, Native Americans, People, Slavery, Western Frontier, and American wars.)

• Ted Cruz grilled Ketanji Brown Jackson on 'Antiracist Baby': Here's why you should read it, by Anika Reed and Hannah Yasharoff, USA TODAY, Jun. 2, 2020, updated Mar. 23, 2022. (At the end of this article, you'll find an extensive list of suggested reading — and I do mean "extensive." Included are nonfiction titles, fiction and poetry by Black writers, and books for young children and teens — plus a list of Black-owned book stores.)

• If we knew our history, a resource list for teachers, presented by the Zinn Education Project. (This list includes material on a wide array of topics in American history, including slavery, voting, and the Civil Rights Movement. It's easy to register to download PDFs from the Zinn Education Project website, and there do not appear to be any restrictions on who can register.)

• Resources for White People to Learn and Talk About Race and Racism, compiled by Nina Berman, Fractured Atlas, May 17, 2018,

• Understanding and Dismantling Racism: A Booklist for White Readers.

• A list of 942 resources, compiled by White Nonsense Roundup.

• Anti-racism resources for white people, a Google doc compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein, May 2020. Includes recommended articles, videos, podcast series, books, films, TV series, resources for white parents to raise anti-racist children. plus organizations to follow on social media.

How to make a difference

• Become an active member of Organizing White Men for Collective Liberation, "a national network mobilizing white men to learn, grow and take action against white supremacy and patriarchy."

• Showing Up for Racial Justice is "a national organization that brings hundreds of thousands of white people into fights for racial and economic justice. We do this work by building people power in multi-racial communities across our network — through campaigns, 200 chapters across the country, and deep local organizing projects."

• How to Be an Anti-Racist Book Club Guide, part of the Oregon State University website, 2020. *("In 2020, Oregon State University Libraries and Press embarked on a nearly year-long book club covering 'How to be an Anti-Racist' by Ibram X. Kendi. (See “Highly-recommended books,” below.) This [guide] contains the chapter guides used by the book club cohorts, as well as additional reading and viewing to augment the discussions.")"

• Support Black-owned bookstores. You can find them by state here. Part of "127 Black-Owned Bookstores in America That Amplify the Best in Literature," by McKenzie Jean-Philippe, Oprah Daily, Aug. 27, 2020. (Scroll down to find the interactive list.)

• The Fragrance Industry Has a Diversity Problem, by Dianna Mazzone, Allure, Sept. 23, 2020. (Includes profiles of Black perfumers and their products.)

• 198 Black-Owned Businesses to Support, by the editors of The Strategist, Sept. 8, 2020.

• Beware of Burnout: Sustainable strategies for activism, by Tatiana Mac, Jun. 8, 2020.

• 106 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice, by Corinne Shutack, Medium.com, Aug. 13, 2017.

• Push for change at the state and local level. Camille Busette's Brookings article, "Mayors and governors: This is how you tackle racism," outlines some of the changes that need to be made. Jun. 2, 2020.

• RESOURCES & TOOLS REGARDING RACISM & ANTI/BLACKNESS & How to be a Better Ally (ally.tools), a Google spreadsheet compiled by Tatum Dorrell, Matt Herndon and Jourdan Dorrell.

White people are not superior. They're just white

• The myth of race, debunked in 3 minutes, uploaded Jan. 13, 2015 to YouTube's Vox channel. (If race is an artificial concept, why does the medical community link health outcomes to race? At 2:20, you'll find the answer.)

• Origins of the Caucasian people, Caucasus region and Racism, uploaded Jun. 5, 2016, to the Ham Farris channel on YouTube. (See also Christoph Meiners, a Wikipedia article. Meiners “was a very early practitioner of scientific racism.”)

• The History of White People, by Nell Irvin Painter, W. W. Norton & Company, NY, 2010. (This is essential reading for anyone who wants a deeper dive into the history of racism. But, as with any history studies, Painter’s detailed exploration shines a light on racism in today’s America.)

• How did White people end up dominating everyone else?, by Kat. (A review of Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.")

Highly-recommended books

It has become clear to me that I'm not able to read as many books as I want — at least not in a timely manner. This presents a quandary, since I’ve made a point of reading every entry on this list (albeit with the exception of entire lists of recommendations). Still, many excellent books have been written on racism, racial history, allyship, and related topics. More are being published every month. With that in mind, I've set up this category to showcase books recommended in discussions.

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson, Random House, NY, 2020.

• All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep: Hope — and Hard Pills to Swallow — About Fighting for Black Lives, by Andre Henry, Convergent Books, NY, 2022. ("A leading voice for social justice reveals how he stopped arguing with white people who deny the ongoing legacy of racism--and offers a proven path forward for Black people and people of color based on the history of nonviolent struggle.")

• Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America, by Elliot Jaspin, Basic Books, NY, 2007. (This is "the story of widespread racial cleansing above and below the Mason-Dixon line ... in the period between Reconstruction and the 1920s, [when] whites banded together to drive out the blacks in their midst. They burned and killed indiscriminately and drove thousands from their homes, sweeping entire counties clear of blacks to make them racially 'pure.' ... Shockingly, these areas remain virtually all-white to this day.")

• The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Malcolm X, with Alex Haley, Grove Press, NY, 1965.

• How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide, Crystal MarieFleming, Beacon Press, Boston, 2018.

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

• The Racial Healing Handbook - Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing, Anneliese A. Singh, New Harbinger Publications, Oakland, CA, 2019. ("The Racial Healing Handbook offers practical tools to help you navigate daily and past experiences of racism, challenge internalized negative messages and privileges, and handle feelings of stress and shame. … Most importantly, you’ll discover the building blocks to creating a community of healing in a world still filled with racial microaggressions and discrimination. This book is not just about ending racial harm—it is about racial liberation.")

• Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, by Angela Davis, Haymarket Books, Chicago 2016. (Radical In Progress offers a downloadable study guide.)

• The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin, Dial Press, NY, 1963. (In two separate essays, Baldwin “discusses the central role of race in American history … and the relations between race and religion, focusing in particular on Baldwin's experiences with the Christian church as a youth, as well as the Nation of Islam’s ideals and influence in Harlem”.)

• Men We Reaped, by Jesmyn Ward, Bloomsbury, London, 2013. (This memoir "focuses on Ward's own personal history and the deaths of five Black men in her life over a four-year span between 2000 and 2004.")

• They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, And A New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement, by Wesley Lowery, Little Brown and Company, Boston, 2016. ("Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.")

• Beloved, by Toni Morrison, Alfred A. Knopf Inc., NY, 1987. (Toni Morrison’s ... masterpiece encapsulates the collective, refracted trauma felt by slaves and their descendants. Inspired by a true story, ... the novel centres on Sethe, a slave mother who has ostensibly 'escaped' from the fictional Sweet Home plantation ... but is haunted, literally and metaphorically, by the ghosts of her tragic past. As she says, 'Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.' Consider it a testament to the power of the novel form, and a lesson in radical empathy." [Source of quote: An Essential Anti-Racist Reading List, by Hayley Maitland, Vogue, May 31, 2020.]) 

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In The Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander, The New Press, NY, 2010. (Alexander argues "that mass incarceration is 'a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow'. The culmination of this social control is what Alexander calls a 'racial caste system', a type of stratification wherein people of color are kept in an inferior position. Its emergence, she believes, is a direct response to the civil rights movement. ...because of this ... Alexander argues for issues with mass incarceration to be addressed as issues of racial justice and civil rights.")

• See also "The New Jim Crow" - Author Michelle Alexander, George E. Kent Lecture 2013, uploaded Mar. 15, 2013 to the University of Chicago channel on YouTube.

• Between The World And Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Spiegel & Grau, NY, 2015. ("In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. ")

• The Good Immigrant: 21 Writers Explore What It Means To Be Black, Asian, And Minority Ethnic In Britain Today, edited by Nikesh Shukla, Unbound, London, NY, 2017. (This anthology of 21 essays was "written by British authors who identify as BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic). The essays concern race, immigration, identity, 'otherness', exploring the experience of immigrant and ethnic minority life in the United Kingdom from their perspective. ... The compilation inspired the American sequel The Good Immigrant USA, published in 2017, which featured BAME authors from the United States.”)

• Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo", by Zora Neale Hurston, Amistad Press, NY, 2018. (Barracoon is based on Hurston's "interviews in 1927 with Oluale Kossola [also known as Cudjoe Lewis] who was presumed to be the last survivor of the Middle Passage. Two female survivors were subsequently recognized but Cudjoe continued to be identified as the last living person with clear memories of life in Africa before passage and enslavement.)

• Your Silence Will Not Protect You, by Audre Lorde, Silver Press, London, 2017. (This posthumous collection of Lorde's essays, speeches, and poems "addresses the difficulties in communication between Black and white women" and "focuses on key themes such as: shifting language into action, silence as a form of violence, and the importance of history.")

• When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America, Ira Katznelson, W. W. Norton & Company, NY, 2005. (Katznelson “demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner.")

• The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression, by Theodore W. Allen, Verso, NY, 1994. ("A monumental study of the birth of racism in the American South which makes truly new and convincing points about one of the most critical problems in US history … a highly original and seminal work.”)

• Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD, 2006. (The author "examines in detail how Whites talk, think, and account for the existence of racial inequality and makes clear that color-blind racism is as insidious now as ever.")

• Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, by Harriet A. Washington, Doubleday, NY, 2007.

• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist, Basic Books, NY, 2014.

• The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, by Nikole Hannah-Jones, One World, NY, 2021. (This is a book-length expansion of the essays presented in the 1619 Project issue of The New York Times Magazine in August 2019. See also: "The 1619 Project," a 6-episode docuseries on Hulu.)

• Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, by Jennifer Eberhardt, Viking, NY, 2019. (“You don't have to be racist to be biased. Unconscious bias can be at work without our realizing it, and even when we genuinely wish to treat all people equally, ingrained stereotypes can infect our visual perception, attention, memory, and behavior. This has an impact on education, employment, housing, and criminal justice.")

• The Color Of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, by Mehrsa Baradaran, Belknap PRess of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2017.

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

• White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better, by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao, Penguin Books, London, 2022. ("It's no secret that white women are conditioned to be nice, but did you know that the desire to be perfect and to avoid conflict at all costs are characteristics of white supremacy culture? Jackson and Rao pose [these] questions: how has being 'nice' helped Black women, Indigenous women and other women of color? How has being 'nice' helped you in your quest to end sexism? Has being 'nice' earned you economic parity with white men? Beginning with freeing white women from this oppressive need to be nice, they deconstruct and analyze nine aspects of traditional white woman behavior — from tone-policing to weaponizing tears — that uphold white supremacy society, and hurt all of us who are trying to live a freer, more equitable life.")

• The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, by Jemar Tisby, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2019. (Intended for Christian readers, "The Color of Compromise is both enlightening and compelling, telling a history we either ignore or just don't know. Equal parts painful and inspirational, it details how the American church has helped create and maintain racist ideas and practices." The author offers "concrete solutions for improved race relations and a racially inclusive church.")

• Black Power: The politics of Liberation in America*, by Kawame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, Vintage Books, NY, 1967, reprinted in 1992.

• The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography, Ariane Cruz, New York University Press: New York, 2016..

• Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America, by Joy-Ann Reid, Mariner Books, Boston, 2024.

• The Color of Kink: Black Women, BDSM, and Pornography, by Ariane Cruz, New York University Press: New York, 2016]. (The Color of Kink is enthusiastically recommended by the author of this article. After reading the linked review, I can understand why.)

• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, by Richard Rothstein, Liveright, NY, 2017.

• What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap, by William Darity Jr. et al, Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity, Insight Center for Community Economic Development, April 2018. (PDF, 67 pages.)

• The Color Of Money Black Banks And The Racial Wealth Gap, by Mehrsa Baradaran, Belknap Press, Cambridge, MA, 2014.

• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, by Audre Lorde, Crossing Press, CA, 1984.

• The Heart of Whiteness: Normal Sexuality and Race in America, 1880–1940, by Julian B. Carter, Duke University, NC, 2007.

• They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South, by by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2019. ("[N]ineteenth-century slaveholding households were not as patriarchal as has been assumed. The South’s married, slave-owning women were thoroughly enmeshed in the world of slavery and were also the direct economic beneficiaries of its fruits. Their financial ties to bondage as an institution meant that 'they were not passive bystanders' to the slave system, but 'co-conspirators' in it." [Source of quote])

• Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond, by Essie Mae Washington-Williams and William Stadiem, Harper Perennial, NY, 2006.

• Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II, by Farah Jasmine Griffin, Civitas Books, 2013.

• Black Women Writers at Work, by Claudia Tate, Continuum, NY, 1984.

• Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, by Ibram X. Kendi, Bold Type Books, NY, 2016.

• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning , by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, Boston, 2020.

• Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race, by Beverly Tatum, Basic Books, NY, 1997. Current edition published 2017.

• So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo, Seal Press, NY, 2018.

• Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present, by Robyn Maynard, Fernwood Publishing, Nova Scotia, 2017.

• Black People Invented Everything: The Deep History of Indigenous Creativity, by Sujan K. Dass, Supreme Design Publishing, Atlanta, GA, 2020.

• Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, 2017.

• The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther, by Jeffrey Haas, Chicago Review Press, Chicago, 2009.

• Waging a Good War: A Military History of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968, Thomas E. Ricks, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NY, 2022. ("The greatest victories for Black Americans of the past century, [Ricks] stresses, were won not by idealism alone, but by paying attention to recruiting, training, discipline, and organization — the hallmarks of any successful military campaign. ... Rich with fresh interpretations of familiar events and overlooked aspects of America’s civil rights struggle, Waging a Good War is an indispensable addition to the literature of racial justice and social — and one that offers vital lessons for our own time.")

• The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, by Heather McGhee, One World, NY, 2021.

• Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, 5th edition, by Donald Bogle, Continuum Publishing Co., NY, 2001. (Reprinted by Bloomsbury Academic, NY, 2015.) (Ultimately, I did get a chance to read this one. It's excellent. Be sure you choose the 5th edition.)

• A Taste of Power: A Black Woman's Story, by Elaine Brown, Anchor Books, NY, 1994.

• Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, by George Jackson, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, 1994.

• Blood in My Eye, by George L. Jackson, Black Classic Press, Baltimore, 1996.

• Bitter Grain - Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party, by Michael Newton, Holloway House Publishing Company, 1991.

• This Side of Glory: The Autobiography of David Hilliard and the Story of the Black Panther Party, by David Hilliard and Lewis Cole, Lawrence Hill Books, Chicago, 2001.

Continue to Part 8 - Anti-racism resources
Go back to Part 6 - Racial injustice in American history
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