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"Racism is a public health crisis," according to a May 2020 statement from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). This means that racism - whether unintentional, unconsciously, or concealed - has affected Black Americans' access to equal and "culturally competent" health care.

For example, it has been widely reported that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black Americans. According to the COVID Racial Data Tracker, the death rate for Black Americans nationwide is 2.5 times higher than the rate for white Americans: 67 per 100,000 vs. 26 per 100,000.

Employees of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sent a letter to their director alleging "widespread acts of racism and discrimination within CDC that are, in fact, undermining the agency's core mission" that may have indirectly contributed to that disparity.

Just as some medical facilities have been overwhelmed by COVID-19 cases, increased anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) - in people who are worried they might catch the virus or have been impacted by the lockdown and social isolation needed to control the pandemic - may, in turn, overwhelm the mental health system.

Racism is also a stressor for mental health problems.

How Racism Causes Mental Health Problems

In the U.S. surgeon general's groundbreaking 2016 report Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General's Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health, it states that Black Americans "are over-represented in populations that are particularly at risk for mental illness."

Why? NAMI, "the nation's largest grassroots mental health organization," says it's because Black people in the United States have been affected by racism and racial trauma "repeatedly throughout history."

That is, racism and racial trauma did not end with the abolition of slavery in 1865, the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or the election of the first Black U.S. president in 2008. The protests in 2020 are a sharp reminder of that.

Mental illnesses such as depression and substance abuse can have a biological component, but they also can be caused or made more likely by external factors. Some are more likely to be experienced by Black individuals, including:

Violence

Incarceration

Involvement in the foster care system

Some other factors are peculiar to the Black Americans' history, such as:

Enslavement

Oppression

Colonialism

Racism

Segregation

Encounters with Police

"Black Lives Matter" is viewed as a controversial statement, but it shouldn't be. It does not mean that only Black lives matter or that other lives don't matter. It means that Black lives also matter.

The controversy comes from the implication that the speaker thinks, based on the evidence, that not everyone agrees with that sentiment.

Take fatal police shootings. Analysis published by the Washington Post found that, in 2019, 55 unarmed individuals died due to police interaction. Of those, 25 or 45% were white, while 14 or 25% were Black. The rate for Black people remains about the same when extended to all 1,002 deaths: 250 or 25%.

However, Black people represented only 13.4% of the American population in 2019 (approximately 44 million) - almost one-sixth of the white population's 76.3% (250 million) - according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

When only males are counted, the rate is even higher, according to a University of Michigan study, with Black men and youths 2.5 times as likely to die as white males.

On the other hand, that might be explained by the number of crimes committed by Black people. Black Americans were more likely to commit violent crimes than white Americans - 52% to 45%. More violent, crime, more violent interaction with the police.

Black people also face higher rates of nonlethal encounters with the police. An analysis of 2015 data by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics found that while police stopped white people more often than Black people, they were more likely to stop a higher percentage of Black people based on their population, including:

9.8% vs. 8.6%: traffic stops - driver

2.5% vs. 2.3%: traffic stops - passenger

1.5% vs. 0.9%: street stops

0.5% vs. 0.3%: arrests

Such police stops, and sometimes multiple stops, may create feelings of ill will towards the police, but the damage can be even more severe for mental well-being.

Feeling oppressed - by law enforcement, by employers, by politicians, by realtors - can lead to physical and mental health problems regardless of whether it is objectively true or is accepted by society at large.

Common Serious Mental Illnesses Among Black People

Among Black Americans with any mental illness, 22.4% or 1.1 million had a serious mental illness (SMI), according to the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH): African Americans.

According to the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health (HHSOMH), Black Americans are 20% more likely to experience serious mental illness (SMI) than the general population.

But other sources claim the rate of SMI is the same or even less for Black people. This seems odd, since poverty influences some SMIs, and Black Americans are more likely to experience poverty.

These results might be skewed, however, due to "culturally oblivious measurements." There may be a communication barrier even among fellow English speakers from different cultures.

Depression

For example, experts say Black Americans sometimes talk about their depression in terms of physical aches and pains. If health care providers are not culturally competent about this form of expression, they might not realize this.

More than just the blues, depression is a serious mental illness and mood disorder characterized by extreme sadness and emptiness, a feeling that nothing matters or is worth doing.

Depression can increase the severity and risk of both physical and mental illnesses, according to the 2009 book Say It Loud! I'm Black and I'm Depressed, and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) agrees. "The risk of developing some physical illnesses is higher in people with depression," and people with a medical illness or condition are more likely to have depression.

Among these risks are:

Cancers of the prostate, colon, and lungs

Heart disease or stroke

Liver disease

Osteoporosis

Diabetes

Alzheimer's disease

Poor self-esteem

Drug abuse

Infectious diseases such as hepatitis B or C and HIV/AIDS

Types of depressive disorders include:

Major depressive disorder. Also known as clinical depression, this is depression that lasts for at least two weeks.

Persistent depressive disorder. Depression that lasts for at least two years.

Peripartum (or postpartum) depression. Depression lasting more than two weeks following the birth of a child.

Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). A particularly debilitating form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) causing deep depression.

Seasonal affective disorder (SAD). Depression brought on by the waning hours of daylight in the fall and winter.

Bipolar disorder. Formerly known as manic depression, this is depression that alternates with periods of mania or exuberance.

Psychotic depression. Depression accompanied by delusions and hallucinations of a depressive nature.

Anxiety disorders

Anxiety is normal and even helpful. One definition is "a heightened state of readiness" that alerts to and prepares for potential threats.

A diagnosis of anxiety disorder means the individual worries about things far more than is warranted. The worries are so intense that they interfere with the individual's life and ability to function.

There are many types of anxiety disorders, including:

Panic disorder. A sudden fear, as if one is going to die, accompanied by physical symptoms that may resemble a heart attack.

Phobias. A fear of some specific thing or situation, such as open or crowded spaces (agoraphobia), heights (acrophobia), or confined spaces (claustrophobia).

Separation anxiety disorder. Fear of separation from someone to whom one is close.

Social anxiety disorder. Fear of being judged or shunned by others.

Generalized anxiety disorder. When many things cause excessive or uncontrollable worry.

According to one study, the lifetime risk for generalized anxiety disorder is 8.6% for white Americans compared to just 4.9% of Black Americans. Another study concluded that Black Americans were 20% less at risk for any anxiety disorder in their lifetimes.

Suicide

Suicide is the act of causing one's own death deliberately. While it is not a mental illness, it may occur because of mental illness.

For example, depression seems to increase the risk of suicide. As many as 60% of people who commit suicide had depression or bipolar disorder. Also, 7% of men and 1% of women with a lifelong history of depression eventually commit suicide.

Not that one has to be mentally ill to commit suicide. The goal of suicide is not death but to end suffering. Persecution, such as caused by racism, may be enough on its own.

According to the University of Michigan, suicide is the second most common cause of death among young Black men after accidental death (such as from drug overdose and motor vehicle traffic).

Younger persons who kill themselves often have a substance abuse disorder in addition to being depressed.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Trauma is most commonly associated with returning soldiers experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but besides combat, many things can cause trauma, including:

Being in or seeing an automobile accident

Rape

Domestic abuse

Violent crime

Watching the video of George Floyd with a police officer's knee on his neck may also cause trauma or PTSD. So might the fear of experiencing a similar incident one's self if stopped by the police.

While trauma causes biological or physiological changes to the individual, those changes may be passed along to future generations not just culturally or psychologically but genetically, through the DNA, just like physical characteristics.

This could help explain why changing laws and extending rights, creating a so-called level playing field, doesn't solve the problem by itself.

Experiencing trauma can also cause ongoing problems with relationships and self-esteem.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, Black youth who are exposed to violence are more than 25% more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Substance Abuse

Substance abuse or substance use disorder (SUD) is a form of mental illness and a physically dependent disease. Both mental illness and SUD are covered under the same "essential health benefits" provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).

SUD is not a sign of weakness of character or a lack of morals. Some people are genetically predisposed to addiction. In those people, substance use is more likely to rewire the brain, hijacking the reward center, causing continued and increasing substance use.

In the 2018 NSDUH: African Americans, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) found that 5.9 million or 17.8% of Black Americans had a mental disorder and/or substance use disorder.

The substances most often used and abused by Black Americans are:

Marijuana: 5.9 million

Alcohol: 1.2 million

Opioids: 1.2 million (including prescription fentanyl, hydrocodone/Vicodin/Norco, oxycodone/OxyContin/Percocet, and heroin)

Cocaine: 577,000

Hallucinogens: 474,000

Inhalants: 175,000

Methamphetamine (meth): 64,000

Substance use disorder and mental illness often co-occur, one causing or exacerbating the other. When this happens, it's known as a dual diagnosis, comorbidity, or simply a co-occurring disorder.

Among Black Americans with a substance use disorder (SUD), more than two-thirds (67.6%) abuse alcohol, almost half (47.1%) abuse illicit drugs, and almost one-seventh (14.8%) abuse both.

Why Don't More Black People Seek Mental Health Help?

According to the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health, Black Americans are less likely to have their mental health problems addressed than Americans as a whole: about 30% compared to 43%.

While most studies find about the same or less (depending on age) incidence of mental health problems among Black Americans, they are less likely to seek help for it. Only one-third of adult Black Americans who need mental health care receive it.

Reasons include:

Systemic racism. One psychotherapist calls it "post-traumatic slave syndrome" (PTSS). Because slaves weren't considered human, it was thought they couldn't experience mental illness. Because of PTSS, descendants who have not directly experienced such discrimination may still feel the effects.

Financial considerations. In 2018, one analysis found that 11.5% of Black adult Americans had no health insurance despite the Affordable Care Act. That makes affording mental health services difficult.

Faith-based alternatives. In parts of the Black community, the church is more trusted than physicians and maybe with good cause. Black Americans who are members of a church or similar organization do have a lower suicide risk. Unfortunately, priests and ministers aren't trained to treat or recognize mental illnesses by themselves. Professional help may still be needed.

Stigma

A big barrier might be that there is still a stigma or shame attached to needing mental health treatment, especially among the Black community, because people may believe that:

Mental illness is a sign of weakness or a personal failing. According to one study, 63% of Black Americans think that. Faith communities, despite their good points, can perpetuate or reinforce this attitude.

It might reflect poorly on their families. Many people still think the therapist's go-to is to blame problems on their clients' mothers and fathers.

Talking to a therapist is airing dirty laundry in public. Such problems should be addressed by the family or larger community, not strangers. Except they often don't.

Removing this stigma - or at least disregarding it - is necessary to get more Black Americans into treatment that can improve their lives.

Among the ways to do this are:

Teaching people that the brain is like any other part of the body: sometimes it needs to be examined by a physician.

Replacing the idea that mental illness is a weakness with the idea that it takes strength to acknowledge a problem and to try to fix it.

Explaining how taking prescribed medication isn't like drug abuse. Sometimes medications can restore normalcy in conjunction with therapies.

The Importance of Culturally Competent Care

One major way to remove stigma and racial barriers is to have more Black and culturally diverse physicians and psychotherapists. Not to meet affirmative action quotas, but because their existence improves trust and care.

A Black surgeon is more aware of and sensitive to concerns that a white surgeon might not be. A 2018 study by Stanford University found that Black men had much better medical results when their doctor was also Black.

There still is misinformation about Black bodies out there: that their skin is thicker or that they aren't as sensitive to pain. A common background can dispel such faulty knowledge.

For example, a Black woman in North Carolina chose a Black cosmetic surgeon to remove some benign bone growths on her skull because he seemed more concerned about her and her wishes to minimize scarring and hair loss.

Due to his familiarity with natural Black hair, he also braided her locs (hair) for easy postoperative care. It was a small thing, but it improved the woman's surgical experience.

Even when it's not a matter of life or death, simple cultural sensitivity can help.

Finding Culturally Competent Mental Health Providers

Significant health care hurdles may include the lack of sufficient numbers of Black mental health care professionals, scientific studies specifically of Black people, and treatments tailored to their needs and preferences. Without such culturally competent care, misdiagnoses are more likely.

Unfortunately, a 2018 survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges found that of active doctors in the United States, only 5% identified as Black, as opposed to 56% who identified as white.

And the Association of Black Psychologists' Therapist Resource Directory has no listings in 19 states (though that doesn't mean there are no Black psychologists there).

If Black American clients can't find a Black American doctor, they can look for one who is culturally competent. Ask them if they have treated other Black Americans or received cultural competence training for treating Black Americans. Then, ask yourself if they listened to and understood your concerns and treated you with dignity and respect.

Black Mental Health Resources

Here are some free or low-cost sources for mental health treatment of the Black community:

AAKOMA Project. Arlington, Virginia-based but serving the Northern Virginia and Washington D.C. area, offering up to three free virtual mental health sessions for "young people."

Black Men Heal. Limited and selective (no guarantees) free mental health service opportunities following a waiting period.

Ethel's Club. Brooklyn-based group offering live-streamed weekday classes, workshops, and wellness sessions for the Black community. The first week is free, up to three sessions a day. Also, free virtual healing and grieving sessions as available (there's a waiting list).

Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation. To help Black Americans with "life-changing stressors and anxiety" receive mental health services, the organization's Free Virtual Therapy Support Campaign pays for up to five individual sessions - first come, first served - "until all funds are committed or exhausted."

Henry Health. Culturally sensitive self-care support and teletherapy for Black men and their families. "The first out-of-pocket session is on us."

Inclusive Therapists. With a directory of therapists offering reduced-fee teletherapy.

Family Paths. "Mental health and supportive services to low-income, multi-stressed individuals and families" in Alameda County, Calif.

The Loveland Foundation. Financial assistance is sometimes available for between four and eight sessions for Black women and girls.

National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network. A directory of mental health practitioners working in agencies, community-based clinics, and private practice. Also, a mental health fund that provides financial assistance to queer and trans people of color by queer and trans people of color.

Open Path Collective. A nonprofit that for a one-time membership fee provides inexpensive in-network therapy, online and in-person.

Talkspace. Live video psychiatry sessions, plus a free therapist-led racial trauma support group, and financial assistance for the Black community.

Therapy for Black Men. Free therapy sessions for Black men are in the planning stages. You can sign up to be notifications when they become available.

Zencare. Provides a list of Black therapists - primarily in Boston, New York City, and Rhode Island - some of whom "offer a sliding scale, lower fees, or out-of-network reimbursement for individuals who cannot otherwise afford to pay for therapy."

Here are some sources for culturally competent mental health providers:

Association of Black Psychologists Directory.

Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective (BEAM).

Black Female Therapists.

Black Male Therapists Directory. Provided by Black Female Therapists.

Black Men Speak.

Black Mental Wellness. Apps, podcasts, videos.

Black Virtual Therapist Network. Provided by the Black Mental Health Alliance.

Brother, You're on My Mind. Provides educational materials on mental health issues affecting black men, particularly Omega Psi Phi Fraternity members, with an online toolkit.

InnoPsych. Resources to find a therapist of color.

LGBTQ Psychotherapists of Color Directory.

Melanin and Mental Health. Directory of "Dope Therapists."

My Tru Circle.

Ourselves Black. Directory of providers, plus a podcast, online magazine, and online discussion groups.

Sista Afya Community Mental Wellness. Chicago-area organization providing sliding-scale rates for mental health treatment for Black women.

Therapy for Black Girls. "An online space dedicated to encouraging the mental wellness of Black women and girls," with a therapist locator, in-office and virtual, plus a blog, podcast, and online community.

Therapy for Queer People of Color. Therapist directory.

Sources

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov - Mental Health Care for African Americans (Chapter 3: Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity: A Supplement to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General)

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Mental Health Issues Facing the Black Community

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"Racism is a public health crisis," according to a May 2020 statement from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). This means that racism - whether unintentional, unconsciously, or concealed - has affected Black Americans' access to equal and "culturally competent" health care. For example, it has been widely reported that COVID-19 has disproportionately affected Black Americans.

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Photo by Xena Goldman

As millions of people across the country take to the streets and raise their voices in response to the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing problem of unequal justice, many people have reached out asking how we can sustain momentum to bring about real change.

Ultimately, it's going to be up to a new generation of activists to shape strategies that best fit the times. But I believe there are some basic lessons to draw from past efforts that are worth remembering.

First, the waves of protests across the country represent a genuine and legitimate frustration over a decades-long failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system in the United States. The overwhelming majority of participants have been peaceful, courageous, responsible, and inspiring. They deserve our respect and support, not condemnation - something that police in cities like Camden and Flint have commendably understood.

On the other hand, the small minority of folks who've resorted to violence in various forms, whether out of genuine anger or mere opportunism, are putting innocent people at risk, compounding the destruction of neighborhoods that are often already short on services and investment and detracting from the larger cause. I saw an elderly black woman being interviewed today in tears because the only grocery store in her neighborhood had been trashed. If history is any guide, that store may take years to come back. So let's not excuse violence, or rationalize it, or participate in it. If we want our criminal justice system, and American society at large, to operate on a higher ethical code, then we have to model that code ourselves.

Second, I've heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn't disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it's often only been in response to protests and civil disobediencethat the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices - and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.

Moreover, it's important for us to understand which levels of government have the biggest impact on our criminal justice system and police practices. When we think about politics, a lot of us focus only on the presidency and the federal government. And yes, we should be fighting to make sure that we have a president, a Congress, a U.S. Justice Department, and a federal judiciary that actually recognize the ongoing, corrosive role that racism plays in our society and want to do something about it. But the elected officials who matter most in reforming police departments and the criminal justice system work at the state and local levels.

It's mayors and county executives that appoint most police chiefs and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with police unions. It's district attorneys and state's attorneys that decide whether or not to investigate and ultimately charge those involved in police misconduct. Those are all elected positions. In some places, police review boards with the power to monitor police conduct are elected as well. Unfortunately, voter turnout in these local races is usually pitifully low, especially among young people - which makes no sense given the direct impact these offices have on social justice issues, not to mention the fact that who wins and who loses those seats is often determined by just a few thousand, or even a few hundred, votes.

So the bottom line is this: if we want to bring about real change, then the choice isn't between protest and politics. We have to do both. We have to mobilize to raise awareness, and we have to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform.

Finally, the more specific we can make demands for criminal justice and police reform, the harder it will be for elected officials to just offer lip service to the cause and then fall back into business as usual once protests have gone away. The content of that reform agenda will be different for various communities. A big city may need one set of reforms; a rural community may need another. Some agencies will require wholesale rehabilitation; others should make minor improvements. Every law enforcement agency should have clear policies, including an independent body that conducts investigations of alleged misconduct. Tailoring reforms for each community will require local activists and organizations to do their research and educate fellow citizens in their community on what strategies work best.

But as a starting point, here's a report and toolkit developed by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and based on the work of the Task Force on 21st Century Policing that I formed when I was in the White House. And if you're interested in taking concrete action, we've also created a dedicated site at the Obama Foundation to aggregate and direct you to useful resources and organizations who've been fighting the good fight at the local and national levels for years.

I recognize that these past few months have been hard and dispiriting - that the fear, sorrow, uncertainty, and hardship of a pandemic have been compounded by tragic reminders that prejudice and inequality still shape so much of American life. But watching the heightened activism of young people in recent weeks, of every race and every station, makes me hopeful. If, going forward, we can channel our justifiable anger into peaceful, sustained, and effective action, then this moment can be a real turning point in our nation's long journey to live up to our highest ideals.

Let's get to work.

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How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change

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As millions of people across the country take to the streets and raise their voices in response to the killing of George Floyd and the ongoing problem of unequal justice, many people have reached out asking how we can sustain momentum to bring about real change.

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Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-create Race in the 21st Century, by Dorothy Roberts

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Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics and Big Business Re-create Race in the 21st Century, by Dorothy Roberts

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Dorothy E. Roberts: Fatal Invention: The New Biopolitics of Race

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The Color Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

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The Color Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

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ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This is the day in 1954 that the Supreme Court issued its famous ruling desegregating schools, Brown versus Board of Education. Today, schools remain largely segregated, and the author Richard Rothstein argues that's because housing is segregated. Even today, black and white people generally don't live in the same neighborhoods. Rothstein's new book is called "The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America." Welcome to the program.

RICHARD ROTHSTEIN: Thank you very much.

SHAPIRO: So the basic argument of your book is that while racist individuals might have contributed to housing segregation in specific cases, there was an overwhelming amount of government policy at the state, local and federal level that explicitly forced black people to live in different places from white people. And I have to admit that reading this book, the geographic scope, the longevity, the sheer creativity of these policies really took me by surprise.

ROTHSTEIN: It takes many people by surprise. This whole history has been forgotten. It used to be well-known. There was nothing hidden about it. The federal government pursued two important policies in the mid-20th century that segregated metropolitan areas. One was the first civilian public housing program which frequently demolished integrated neighborhoods in order to create segregated public housing.

The second program that the federal government pursued was to subsidize the development of suburbs on a condition that they be only sold to white families and that the homes in those suburbs had deeds that prohibited resale to African-Americans. These two policies worked together to segregate metropolitan areas in ways that they otherwise would never have been segregated.

SHAPIRO: The book gives so many different examples of how this played out, and one of the worst offenders is the FHA, the Federal Housing Administration. Explain why this one government agency has so much influence over where people live and what the FHA did to prevent black people from buying and owning homes.

ROTHSTEIN: Perhaps the best-known example is Levittown, just east of New York City, but there were subdivisions like this all over the country. What the federal government did in the 1940s and '50s, it came to a developer like Levitt, the Levitt family that built Levittown. That family could never have assembled the capital necessary to build 17,000 homes on its own.

What the federal government did, the FHA, is guarantee bank loans for construction and development to Levittown on condition that no homes be sold to African-Americans and that every home have a clause in its deed prohibiting resale to African-Americans.

SHAPIRO: The FHA policies here were not merely incentives or encouragements. You tell the story of progressive, idealistic developers who wanted to build integrated housing communities and were absolutely unable to do so. And we're not just talking about in the Deep South here.

ROTHSTEIN: We're not talking about the Deep South at all. We're talking of the North, the West, the Midwest. The great American novelist Wallace Stegner got a job right after World War II at Stanford University. There was an enormous civilian housing shortage. He joined and helped to lead a co-operative of 400 families who bought a large tract outside Stanford University where they wanted to build single-family homes.

The FHA refused to insure those homes refused to provide the capital for construction because the 400-member co-operative had three African-American members. The co-operative tried to resist the FHA's demand, promising the FHA that the number of African-Americans in the co-operative wouldn't exceed the percentage of African-Americans in California as a whole.

The FHA refused that compromise. Finally, the co-operative had to disband because they couldn't go ahead with the project. They sold the land to a private developer, who with FHA guarantees built single family homes with racially exclusive deeds.

SHAPIRO: Your book also explains one way in which black neighborhoods became undesirable. You described zoning laws in which black parts of town were officially zoned for industrial plants, waste disposal, other things that we would consider a blight. And meanwhile, those businesses were explicitly kept out of white neighborhoods in the same cities.

ROTHSTEIN: Yes, there are examples in St. Louis and Los Angeles, neighborhoods that once they had African-American residents were rezoned to permit industrial and toxic uses. Those rezonings turned those neighborhoods into slums. White families outside those neighborhoods looked upon the neighborhoods, saw slums and concluded that African-Americans were slum dwellers and that if they moved into their neighborhoods, into the white neighborhoods, they would bring those conditions with them.

SHAPIRO: Why were all of these policies put in place? Was it just overt racism on the part of policy makers? What actually was the motivation?

ROTHSTEIN: Well, that's very hard to know. And one thing that should be remembered is that it can't be blamed simply on the standards of the time because there were people who dissented. People did know better, but they had other priorities. And they caved in to private prejudice and some of their constituents. They themselves were prejudiced. It was assumptions about racial superiority, but it also was cowardice in not confronting popular views about racial superiority.

SHAPIRO: So as you lay out this history, these segregationist, discriminatory, harmful structures were built over the first half of the 20th century, and then Congress passes the Fair Housing Act in 1968 which says many of those practices were illegal, unconstitutional and they stop - for the most part, the worst ones. Why doesn't that solve the problem?

ROTHSTEIN: Well, because all the Fair Housing Act could do was prohibit future discrimination. But by the time the Fair Housing Act was passed, the patterns of segregation had been firmly established. Simply passing a Fair Housing Act did not enable African-Americans who were previously living in urban areas to relocate to the suburbs from which they'd been excluded. I gave the example earlier of Levittown in 1947-48, when those homes were built with a racially restrictive policy.

Those homes sold for about $8,000 a piece or $100,000 more or less in today's currency. African-Americans, working class families could have bought those homes. Today though, those homes sell for $300,000, $400,000. They're no longer affordable to working class families. In the ensuing two generations, the white families who moved into those homes gained that $200,000, $300,000 in equity appreciation.

African-Americans living in rented apartments, prohibited from moving to the suburbs, gained none of that appreciation. The result is that today nationwide, African-American incomes on average are about 60 percent of white incomes, but African-American wealth is about 5 to 7 percent of white wealth. That enormous difference is almost entirely attributable to unconstitutional federal housing policy practiced in the mid-20th century.

SHAPIRO: The current secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, has criticized what he calls social engineering programs that are meant to help black homeowners or renters. It sounds as though you're arguing that the first two-thirds of the 20th century were social engineering to harm black people in homeownership and that maybe it will require some social engineering to undo that harm.

ROTHSTEIN: Yes. What I tell Secretary Carson is that the reforms that he's criticizing are an attempt to undo social engineering. Clearly he's right that when you try to engineer social policy the way that is necessary to reverse segregation, there are some unintended consequences.

There will be prices to be paid, but those prices are small compared to the costs of the social engineering that was conducted in the first two-thirds of the 20th century by the federal government. And that's a price that we have to pay to rectify a serious constitutional violation.

SHAPIRO: Richard Rothstein is with the Economic Policy Institute and the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. His new book is "The Color Of Law: A Forgotten History Of How Our Government Segregated America." Thank you so much.

ROTHSTEIN: Thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF PERPETUAL GROOVE'S "TEAKWOOD BETZ")

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'The Color Of Law' Details How U.S. Housing Policies Created Segregation

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NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with author Richard Rothstein about his new book, The Color of Law, which details how federal housing policies in the 1940s and '50s mandated segregation and undermined the ability of black families to own homes and build wealth.

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Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi 

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Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi 

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Teaching kids about the complicated history of racism

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Whistling Vivaldi:  How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, by Claude M. Steele

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Whistling Vivaldi:  How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do, by Claude M. Steele

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NEAL CONAN, host:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. Im Neal Conan in Washington.

Our social identities come from a lot of places: our race, our sex, our age, our political affiliations, our medical diagnoses, our high schools, colleges, our favorite baseball teams. And each of those identities comes along with a set of expectations or stereotypes.

We all know that women can't compete with men at higher math. We all know that white men can't jump. And then there's a curious fact: When confronted with those negative stereotypes, female math majors do perform worse on tests, and white jumpers fail to clear the usual bar. Take away the threat to their identity, and they'll do fine.

It's a phenomenon social psychologist Claude Steele calls the stereotype threat, and his new book looks at the many and surprising ways that these expectations affect our lives. He also lays out a plan to minimize the impact.

So call and tell us what situations you've had to deal with in which your social identity and the expectations that come along with it presented a challenge. How did you overcome it, if you did? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our Web site. Thats at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Later in the hour, actor, producer and now Broadway director Stanley Tucci joins us to talk about his new revival of the 1989 farce "Lend me a Tenor." But first, Claude Steele. His book is called "Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affects Us." He joins us from our bureau in New York City. Nice to have you on TALK OF THE NATION today.

Dr. CLAUDE STEELE (Author, "Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us"): Great to be here.

CONAN: And let me ask you to start with your realization of your own social identity, when you were a kid going to the swimming pool.

Dr. STEELE: Well, as I begin the book with the story of trying to remember when I first became aware I was African-American. And to the best of my ability, we psychologists know that memory is a construction. So you're always cautious, but to the best of my ability, it was one day, the last day of school, second or third grade, coming home with kids in the neighborhood. And the conversation came up that gee, we couldn't go to the swimming pool that was three or so blocks away, in a white neighborhood, and that we'd have to except on Wednesday afternoon. So if we were going to swim that summer in that pool, we would have to go only on Wednesday afternoons. And the reason for that became because we were black, because we were African-American.

And that was, in some ways, the first realization I had of being black and that the other kids I lived around were also black and that we had this contingency of identity, as I've been calling it, to deal with.

CONAN: The identity, being black, the contingency being you can't swim at that pool except on Wednesdays.

Dr. STEELE: Exactly.

CONAN: And you write later in the book that, in fact, had someone sat you down at that age and said son, let me tell you about discrimination, that you would have listened politely for a little while. But if they told you can only swim at the pool on Wednesdays, suddenly you were pretty interested in race.

Dr. STEELE: That's correct. I mean, it really the swimming pool restriction really affected how my life was going to be. The instruction from adults that this is important and you should think about it and understand it, those things are kind of abstract and may be interesting, but they wouldn't be nearly as compelling psychologically, and they sort of take over your thinking and functioning as much as a real restriction tied to an identity.

CONAN: And a lot of your book is, in fact, a result of your investigation as to why specifically African-American, but later minority students, seemed to do so poorly academically at big institutions like the University of Michigan, where you worked, or at Stanford University, where you also work. And indeed, what you found out was it was this social identity and the negative consequences of it.

Dr. STEELE: Yes, the prospect if you can imagine, you talked to - you had a woman at the beginning of the hour talking about her experience in math. You can imagine being a woman taking a difficult math course, let's say in her second or third year of college, and experiencing frustration at that.

That frustration in math occasions the relevance of the stereotype about women's math ability. And if she's invested in doing well at math, she could worry that oh my goodness, you know, I've invested so much in it, but here it is. Maybe what they say is true. And that could be upsetting and distracting and interfere with her functioning right there in the middle of that course or in the middle of taking that standardized test. And that has been what our research is focused on, is trying to test that idea, put it to test. I and my colleagues have done that over the last 20 years.

CONAN: And one of the fascinating findings is that, in fact: A, you do have to care about the outcome of this performance, and the more accomplished you are, the more this effect shows up.

Dr. STEELE: Yeah, yeah, you have more invested in it. So the if you really, if you don't care about if you're a woman, and you don't care about doing well with math, your life is on another path, then the prospect of confirming such a stereotype about your group's ability or - it isn't as upsetting to you because you're not invested in that area, but when you've really invested yourself, then the prospect of that stereotype being true or its being seen to be true and you being treated accordingly, that has considerable impact. It scares you, and that fear can directly interfere with your functioning.

CONAN: And you go on to prove this, as you mentioned, with white, female math majors, well, female math majors in general. There's a fascinating part of the test where, in fact, you somebody tests Asian female math majors to see whether both stereotypes will work: A, they're failing at math because they're female, or their expectation that they will succeed because they're Asian.

Dr. STEELE: Yes, yes. I didn't do that, but some other very clever researchers did, and they found that the performance follows whichever stereotype you make most salient in the situation, most obvious. If you remind them of their gender, then they underperform, being affected by that negative stereotype. If you remind them of their ethnicity, then they don't underperform in relation to men. So whichever stereotype is in the air seems to drive the direction of performance.

CONAN: And this goes to white sprinters, you also found out when they're posed against black sprinters - and let me read you a quote from later in the book: There exists no group on earth that is not negatively stereotyped in some way: the old, the young, Northerners, Southerners, WASPs, computer whiz kids, Californians and so forth. In other words, all of us, no matter who we are, somewhere there's a negative stereotype that we all bear.

Dr. STEELE: Indeed it's true.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Dr. STEELE: I could never haven't yet found a group that doesn't have at least some negative stereotype about them.

CONAN: And does this help explain to you why we seem to live in a nation where there is no group that does not feel like an aggrieved minority?

Dr. STEELE: Well, it's probably part of it, that there is no group that doesn't have a negative stereotype, and when that if that stereotype is relevant to them in an important set of situations, like the classroom or the workplace or the basketball court or something that they care about, then they're going to feel this pressure.

I mean, the beauty, of course, is that from this analysis grows some convincing strategies for reducing this threat. And some people, of course, know these, learn these strategies on their own, but I think we've got a long way in kind of isolating some.

CONAN: Indeed, that experiment with the women Asian women math majors points to one. If you tell them a positive part of the stereotype, that'll help.

Dr. STEELE: That's right. That's right. Being reminded of positive role models can greatly reduce the otherwise damaging effects of the negative stereotype.

CONAN: Let's get some...

Dr. STEELE: That's one strategy.

CONAN: Let's get some callers in on the conversation. We'll get to some of the others a little bit later in the program.

Dr. STEELE: Great.

CONAN: Our guest is Claude Steele, author of "Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us." 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. When has stereotypes about your social identity affected your life? John(ph) is on the line from Manchester, New Hampshire.

JOHN (Caller): Hey, yeah. This is John. How are you guys doing?

CONAN: Good.

Dr. STEELE: Fine.

JOHN: Yeah, hey. I want to say something about the (unintelligible) goes beyond, like, gender or race or class like that, but I found that since I've graduated high school, and I've yet to go to college, but I'm in the U.S. Forest Service. And so I'll show up on the worksite, and right away, they'll have this instant stigma that since I've not attended college, that they have stereotyped that I am not as qualified or capable, but it turns out I'm able to par, if not excel past their expectations. So that's one stereotype, one that maybe you guys could address for me.

CONAN: Okay. As a fellow non-collegian, John, I hear you. But go ahead, Claude Steele.

JOHN: Yeah, thats, like, that's what I'm talking about. It goes beyond, like I've seen - so I've worked with females, blacks, whites, every race you can think of, every demographic, every background. And the thing is, is like it comes down to the end of the day, you're sitting around the fire after you've just worked really hard all day in the Park Service that it'll come down to the fact that, like, they'll look at you less respectively in the one fact that you don't have that piece of paper saying you know what you know, but all the while, I've had three or four years experience now past anything that these college graduates really have.

Like, they're all greenhorns compared to me, but since I don't have the piece of paper, there's instantly a stereotype that I don't know exactly the same, like, how to make a grade in the trail, or I don't know the same, like, the same...

CONAN: We hear you, John. And let me ask Claude Steele about this. In fact, this sort of comes up with an email you got from somebody who attended one of your lectures and said: Gee, you've listed all these things that have negative stereotypes. You didn't mention mental illness.

Dr. STEELE: Yeah, that's a good example, and it connects to the caller's concern that this was, I was going on and on about these other stereotypes and performance in math and athletics and the like, and the email reminded me that in her case, she was manic-depressive or bipolar and that in the audience, she felt reluctant to raise her hand and ask about that because she thought everybody would begin to see her that way and to see her as having a mental illness and that that might affect her employment options and how people related to her.

And she provided a perfect example of the vast array of forms of negative of stereotype threat that people can experience, just as the caller's experience does. That's one that I hadn't really thought of, but as he describes it, it's a very compelling experience. And it's precisely an example of stereotypes around in that there's something about him that, you know, authorizes this kind of stereotype, and he becomes aware of it, and that's the experience of the threat. And it affects his relationships with other people, his functioning at various times and so on.

CONAN: And let me ask you about the title of your book, "Whistling Vivaldi."

Dr. STEELE: Yes, that comes from a friend, Brent Staples who writes for the New York Times, and his autobiography called "Parallel Time," a great book I can plug. He describes being a graduate student, an African-American graduate student at the University of Chicago, walking down the street dressed as a student and realizing that his mere presence was making whites uncomfortable.

And they would avoid him or sort of cross the street to get away from him and so on. He realized from this kind of behavior that they were seeing him through the lens of a negative stereotype about African-Americans in that neighborhood, that perhaps as a young male, black male, he might be violent. And it was making his whole experience of the situation tense and awkward. He learned how to whistle Vivaldi to deflect that stereotype.

CONAN: When they heard the classical music being whistled, they said oh, this is a man of refinement.

Dr. STEELE: Exactly. And he relaxed, they relaxed, and the situation went on.

CONAN: Another cue, perhaps we'll get to it a bit later. We're talking with Claude Steele about his book "Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us." Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(Soundbite of music)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION. Im Neal Conan in Washington.

No one is immune from stereotype. Every one of us is part of some group affected by negative perceptions, and we know we may be judged by it. Claude Steele calls it stereotype threat, a topic he studied for many years. He writes about it in his latest book, "Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us."

So call and tell us what situations you've had to deal with in which your social identity and the expectations that come along with it presented a challenge. How did you overcome it if you did? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our Web site. Thats at npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

And let's go next to Tonya(ph), Tonya with us from Madison.

TONYA (Caller): Hi, Neal.

CONAN: Good to talk with you.

TONYA: You, too. So I'm an engineer. When I was in K through 12, I had showed that I had a lot of apparently from that age - some good mathematical skills, and by my senior year, I was taking, like, honors calculus.

And then I went to a community college, a small college in Southern Michigan and was valedictorian with my associate's in engineering and had won the engineering department award. And I transferred to the University of Michigan, and suddenly I was in a very different place.

I was in a place that had people from all over the world, you know, predominately men. And I think that in retrospect now, listening to this, that it seems to make sense because when I would take an exam, I would get everything right that I would finish, but I almost feel like I was trying to be so meticulous because I was fearful that I wasn't going to perform how I was used to performing that I actually didn't perform as well as I was used to performing.

CONAN: And that seems like an accurate description of this effect, Claude Steele.

Mr. STEELE: Yes, that really is a perfect description of it. And it is at the University of Michigan, although all schools have this, many schools, especially stronger schools, have this kind of experience is rife - can be rife there.

That's a perfect description because somebody - it's not an effect that's tied to their real abilities. It's, in effect, it's almost like an intimidation factor, and the other critical thing in the caller's description is place.

In some places, it can be very powerful, where there are a lot of cues that make one aware of one's identity and the contingencies that can be tied to it. That can make the experience of stereotype threat much worse, whereas in other situations, where maybe there are more women, you know, you're in a high school, and the girls are just as good at math at the boys, and there isn't as much visibility of this stereotype to give it credibility, it isn't a powerful thing.

But as you move up the ladder, and there are fewer women in the classes and the like, the stereotype and the pressures of it become more intense.

CONAN: The examples you use in your book is Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman justice of the United States Supreme Court, felt intense pressure until she was joined on the court by another woman.

Mr. STEELE: That's right, Ginsburg.

CONAN: Indeed.

Mr. STEELE: Which she describes as the happiest day one of the happiest days in her life was when Ruth Bader Ginsburg showed up on the Supreme Court. That made it so that she wasn't the only woman, and everything she did wasn't interpreted in terms of her being a woman.

That put a lot of pressure and made all the stereotypes constantly irrelevant to her functioning and I'm sure must have made her miserable, as she describes. But then when another woman comes, her decision is not just a woman's decision. There are several women's decisions here, and it dissipates.

CONAN: And it raises again and Tonya, thank you very much for the call -raises another one of the solutions you suggest in your book. It's an idea called critical mass. If you have enough of a member of whichever minority it is, and again you use the example of women in a philharmonic orchestra.

Mr. STEELE: Yes, that sends a strong signal that that identity is not itself a source of disdain, or in the situation, that that identity can be valued there, and it's possible to be there and to function effectively. That kind of a message that critical mass sends, relaxes the sense in a person that they're under this kind of threat.

CONAN: And that number is a little hard to judge in each situation, two enough apparently for the Supreme Court, but 40 percent as it turns out for a philharmonic orchestra.

Mr. STEELE: Yeah.

CONAN: But anyway, let's go next to Chris(ph), and Chris with us from Rehoboth in Delaware.

CHRIS (Caller): Hi. I am a 53-year-old woman. So I grew up in the '50s and '60s, and I have to say that my personal response to anyone telling me you can't do that because you're a girl has consistently been in my life to say, well, yes I can. And I'm going to prove it to you, and I'll do it better than you do.

Mr. STEELE: Yes, it's important to realize that the causes of underperformance in our research are not from women giving up. They don't give up under that kind of pressure. They do try extra hard, but sometimes, that can not foster. That can interfere with, performance in its own right.

What's happening when you're doing that is that you're it affects the allocation of your cognitive resources. They're you're paying more attention to trying hard. You're paying more attention to thoughts that are kind of resisting thoughts that are disturbing and so on. And with that kind of activity going on in the background, there's less attention to be allocated to the task at hand, and that's how this kind of threat can interfere with performance.

CONAN: As you Claude Steele puts it in his book, you're not only doing the test or whatever it is, you're slaying a ghost.

Mr. STEELE: Yes, you're multitasking.

CHRIS: But that hasn't I haven't had the experience of ever underperforming in my field. I mean, I don't I understand what you're saying, and I think I probably agree with you.

CONAN: He's talking about generalized situations, not obviously, there are individuals individuals vary.

CHRIS: Right.

Mr. STEELE: Individuals vary, and situations vary. There are some situations where the stereotype about gender is more or less relevant. The relevance of the stereotype varies. It's very pointed in the area of math and quantitatively based fields.

CHRIS: Well, I'm a clergy person. So it's very pointed in my field, as well.

Mr. STEELE: Did you say clergy?

CONAN: Yes.

CHRIS: Yeah, clergy.

Mr. STEELE: Oh, well, I guess that's true.

(Soundbite of laughter)

CHRIS: Yeah, yeah. No, I just wonder if I mean, to me, it's not a threat, it's a challenge. It's an opportunity. It's an invitation. Is that just the personal part or is that...

Mr. STEELE: Well, I do think that's the most constructive way...

CHRIS: Huh?

Mr. STEELE: I do think that's the most constructive way to regard it. I really do. It's just that in certain situations where performance on a difficult task is the issue and is persistently the issue, one is at the frontier of their skills, moving through a math curriculum or a physics curriculum, or that's where this sort of daily pressure can begin to have more of a wearing effect.

CONAN: And indeed thank you very much, Chris indeed not just a wearing effect. You come across a phenomenon called John Henryism, which may help explain the shorter life spans, due to hypertension, of some African-Americans.

Mr. STEELE: Yes. This is again not my own research, but it's very relevant in the sense that it describes some of the costs of trying hard over a lifetime to resist a stereotype, that it can cause be a source of hypertension and other related diseases, the effort to if you're in a situation where you're consistently pushing against that and pushing against that, a tax is paid eventually, and some of that tax has to do with one's health.

CONAN: There are other implications to this, and you don't go into this in great depth, but you present some research, again not your own, about how easily we humans discriminate against each other, even when the categories we're divided in are seemingly meaningless: over-estimaters and under-estimaters, whatever that may mean.

And yet when placed in those categories, we will work on behalf of our own group, to individuals in our group to the detriment of people in other groups, and this helps explain, to some degree, this phenomenon seemingly we're hardwired with it why - this is interestingly presented in the context of a young man from Lebanon, who is well, he's got all kinds of stereotypes, but he writes about violence in the Middle East.

Mr. STEELE: Yeah, the first it turns out this is again a whole lot of social-psychological research, not mine but just the minimal divisions among us, if they're made salient, we can begin to identify with whichever side we're on. It's like identifying with something like our school.

It's not really rationally, from a distance, that great an identity, but we identify very quickly with it and feel those feelings very deeply. It's something fundamental about being a human being. It becomes part of our identity.

And so it the point there is that it just takes as kind of a minimal division of people for this whole apparatus of stereotype threat to get underway. We start to stereotype the other group. They stereotype us. We react to the stereotypes, and you have a situation of the sort we're describing.

CONAN: And then they are the other, and you can do terrible things.

Mr. STEELE: Yes, in the name of having one's group identity threatened, to protect a group: your country, your school. The argument is that people can do things, be more violent, than they would be sometimes even in defense of themselves.

CONAN: Let's get another caller in on the conversation. This is J.R., J.R. with us from Circleville in Ohio.

J.R. (Caller): Yes, I was born in southeast Ohio, and I think I first realized that I was being stereotyped as, you know, an Appalachian when I made it to grad school, and I was helping teach a class for high school teachers. I was one of the grad students who was TAing, and I had a teacher from northeast Ohio say well, you know, you're awful smart, or you know this very well or whatever she said, and where are you from?

And I said, well, I was from Southeast Ohio. And she said, well, you did very well for yourself.

CONAN: Hmm.

Dr. STEELE: Hmm.

J.R.: Get out from where you were. And now I'm a school teacher. I'm working back in Southeast Ohio. And now I think I've come to realize the stereotype (unintelligible). I didn't realize it as a student so much. But now I'm trying to teach students and I'm trying to help them overcome these stereotypes that they've become So...

CONAN: And what techniques do you use to do that?

J.R.: Well, I wish I could tell you I was very effective at it. I don't know how effective I am. I'm only three years into teaching now, so I'm developing these things. The real ideal is to hold them to the highest standards that I can and I make them realize, hopefully, eventually, sometimes I fail at this, but I try to hold them to the highest standards and let them know that they can succeed even when it's hard. And that it being hard doesn't mean that it's -you don't - you're not smart. It just means it's hard. It's hard for everybody. It's hard if you're from Southeast Ohio or if you're Brooklyn, New York, if you're from Boston, Massachusetts, this is hard for everybody to understand.

CONAN: Well, that's one technique, Claude Steele.

Dr. STEELE: Yes. I - you've - most of the solutions we've come up with people have found in their own lives, and this is a perfect example of that. One of the - to put - bring it to a sharp point, one of the things we found is that if you give - if you're very demanding in a classroom situation of that sort and, at the same time, you affirm the students' abilities to realize those high standards that you're setting, you - the combination of things is very effective at the reducing the effects - the negative effects of stereotype threat. It signals to the student that they're not being seen as having limited ability. They're not being seen through the lens of that stereotype. And then they can rise to the call of doing better and, you know, working hard in the -with the material.

CONAN: This was described in your book as something you stumble across by accident when, again, testing some of those female math majors and the expectation that they might do worse, you inadvertently reminded them that, well, you're from Stanford.

Dr. STEELE: Yes.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Dr. STEELE: And with that frame in mind, they relaxed, they did a lot better. It made the stereotype about women's math abilities just less relevant to them. That's one of the sort of tricks of reducing this threat is to do something that makes the stereotype that would normally be relevant to them, not relevant in that situation. And that's one strategy we used, was to remind them of being that they were from Stanford.

But the gentlemen's strategy is another one. If - it tells his students he's not seeing them through the negative stereotype about their background. He's demanding a lot from them and he's affirming their ability to achieve it.

CONAN: J.R., good luck to you.

J.R.: Thank you very much, Neal.

CONAN: Appreciate the phone call.

Dr. STEELE: Yeah.

CONAN: We're talking with Claude Steele about his book, "Whistling Vivaldi," and other clues to how stereotypes affect us.

You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

And we have this email from Glen(ph) in Kansas City. My name is Glen. As a female filmmaker, it's been intimidating to get my projects noticed. One of the things that's helped me most is submitting to festivals so many times it's assumed Glen is a male, and ironically, this has helped me. Once when I checked in at a festival, they asked me if I was his assistant, withholding the badge until I explained I was Glen.

And it's interesting, that email came in and reminded of the story you tell about Anatole Broyard.

Dr. STEELE: Yes. Yes. This is a strategy used to avoid stereotype threat. And I think, in some ways, it's some of the more compelling evidence of the existence of stereotype threat in real life that a couple of strategies, both passing, where people change their names, or if they have the appearance to do it, shift from being black to being white; representing themselves as white to avoid the experience of being negatively stereotyped. Or another strategy is to expatriate...

CONAN: Mm-hmm.

Dr. STEELE: ...to move to another society where the stereotypes are different and one doesn't have to, therefore, experience the same kind of stereotyping.

CONAN: Oh.

Dr. STEELE: I think both of those strategies, passing and expatriation, are similar to the Glen strategy that she's using there where she's deflecting being seen and treated in terms of the stereotype by representing herself differently.

CONAN: Let's see if we can go next to John(ph). John with us from Flint, Michigan.

JOHN (Caller): Yes. I have a situation where my daughter is, not just (unintelligible), also my daughter is in grade school. We lived in an affluent neighborhood and went to a nice - very nice school. And she did great in math and all her subjects. We had to move to another neighborhood, but went to an intercity school. And immediately, all her grades dipped because they were treating her as with the other African-American students, as if their level of comprehension is at one level.

It's kind of funny, because at home, we would do her homework and she'd get everything right. But when she went to school, her teachers said she had a notable difficulty in solving problems. And then we - to solve to remedy the situation, we took her out of that school and put her into a private school. And lo and behold, she's almost like a math whiz of her grade.

So we're trying to figure out, you know, what was the situation with the one school. We have a before and after picture, but now we can see that, you know, maybe she was being stereotyped as far as, you know, what - relationship with everyone else.

Dr. STEELE: Yeah. It sounds like in the school where she did poorly, did worse than expected, she was under some low expectations on the part of her teachers and that maybe the whole climate there had that. I'm not sure that's all together stereotype threat, but it's nonetheless a powerful social psychological pressure to be seen in terms of - and treated in terms of low expectations that can undermine motivation and undermine interest, and all kinds of things that you're describing were evidenced by your daughter.

CONAN: And we wish her continued good luck, John, in pursuit of math.

And - but let me - we just have a minute left, but I wanted to ask you about the alternate theory, which is if you're looking at the situation, yes, there could be this psychological pressure that people are responding to. It can also be something inherent, that maybe women aren't as good as men at math, biologically, and something in their brains or that white men can't jump.

Dr. STEELE: Aha. You'll have to read the book for how we sort out these explanations.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Prof. STEELE: But we do, I think, definitively, over 20 years of research. And you do it by putting people in performance situations and showing that their performances can be equal when you get rid of this stereotype threat. Whereas the other theory - the different God made women and men different theory...

(Soundbite of laughter)

Dr. STEELE: ...to put it nicely, that theory would predict that nothing you did in the situation would change. If you give them difficult math, women are always going to under-perform. If you give difficult problems, African-American students are always going to under-perform. Well, they don't. When you do things in those situations to reduce stereotype threat and that is probably the principal evidence that - in behalf of this argument.

CONAN: Claude Steele, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate it.

Dr. STEELE: Thank you. It's my pleasure.

CONAN: Claude Steele's book, "Whistling Vivaldi: And Other Clues to How Stereotypes Affect Us." And he joined us from our bureau in New York.

Coming up, Oscar-nominated actor Stanley Tucci on his career, his Broadway directorial debut and the value of farce in tough times. If you'd like to join us to talk with Stanley Tucci, 800-989-8255. Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

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'Whistling Vivaldi' And Beating Stereotypes

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Women taking a math test will perform worse when reminded that women aren't expected to do well in math. Social psychologist Claude Steele calls this an example of the "stereotype threat." In his book, Whistling Vivaldi, he lays out a plan to reshape those expectations.

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How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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How To Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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At a time when white nationalism and hate crimes are all too common, historian Ibram X. Kendi takes a critical look at how racist ideology operates in American society and what can be done to stop it in its tracks.

Reset checked in with Kendi about his new book, How To Be An Antiracist.

On exploring racism through the lens of personal experience

Ibram X. Kendi: I think when people think about race and racism, it's a deeply personal affair. ... Many people are very, in many ways, closed-minded or even defensive, especially when they're charged with being racist. In many ways, we're taught to close up and to feel as if we're being attacked and to sort of not confess and not admit when we're being racist. I knew that the heartbeat of anti-racism itself is confession, and so I wanted to model that in sharing my own personal story.

On the connection between racism and capitalism

Kendi: Historically, when you look at the emergence of capitalism itself, it emerged in the same place at the same time as what became known as the transatlantic slave trade. And it grew through colonialism. It grew through chattel slavery, particularly in the Americas. And so when you talk about its origin and its growth, it originated and grew side by side with racism itself. ... When you look at it empirically, particularly in our time, you can't really separate wealth from race in the United States and across the world, and you can't really separate poverty from race. And the reason being is because racist and capitalist policies have long intersected to essentially make it such that let's say black people were disproportionately poor and white people were disproportionately wealthy.

On reparations and the racial wealth gap

Kendi: White people have about 10 times more wealth in this country than black people, and then when you actually forecast forward, one forecast fact is finding that ... between now and 2053, white wealth will grow. Median black wealth is forecasted the red line at zero dollars. ... In other words, you have a racial wealth gap in this country that's growing. ... One of the things that I've sort of encouraged people who are for or even against reparations who also classify themselves as someone who's for equity, racial equity and economic justice and racial justice, is how do you reverse and potentially even eliminate the racial wealth gap, which is a function of past and present racist policies, without reparations? And I've never really been able to hear a policy program that essentially can do that other than something as wide-ranging as reparations.

On how to live as an antiracist

Kendi: I think the first thing is an antiracist is looking out upon their society, in their everyday life, and seeing the racial groups as equal. Someone who is not denigrating or lifting up any particular racial group. Someone who as they see racial inequity, they're not stating that's the result of a particular racial group's inferiorities, but that's the result of racist policies. And then that person is seeking to say, "OK, you know what area am I most passionate about? Or what place am I most passionate about reforming?" And then they follow that passion or that area. They become part of that struggle to challenge racist policies, and they either become part of that struggle through donating their time ... [or] they donate and finance those campaigns and movements and organizations. ... Fundamentally, an antiracist is a part of the struggle that is challenging racism on an everyday basis.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Click the "play" button to hear the entire conversation.

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Historian Ibram X. Kendi On 'How To Be An Antiracist'

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At a time when white nationalism and hate crimes are all too common, historian Ibram X. Kendi takes a critical look at how racist ideology operates in American society and what can be done to stop it in its tracks. Reset checked in with Kendi about his new book, How To Be An Antiracist.

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Biased:  Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think and Do, by Jennifer Eberhardt

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Biased:  Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think and Do, by Jennifer Eberhardt

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AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Jennifer Eberhardt is a scientist, a social psychologist who studies how we interact with one another. For more than two decades, she has been unpacking implicit racial bias, how our perceptions of race play into our everyday interactions, even when we're not aware of it. She's trained police departments and guided tech startups on recognizing their own implicit bias and how it affects their work. Now she's written about her research in a new book called "Biased: Uncovering The Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, And Do."

Jennifer Eberhardt is African-American. She's a Stanford professor raising three sons with her husband in Silicon Valley. When we spoke, I asked her, how did she get started on studying racial bias?

JENNIFER EBERHARDT: Wow.

(LAUGHTER)

CHANG: Where do we even begin?

EBERHARDT: Maybe it started when I was just in elementary school. We lived in an all-black neighborhood, and everybody around me was black. You know, all of the significant relationships I had in my life were with black people. And my parents announced that we were going to move to an all-white suburb. And so I was worried about that. But when I got there, I also noticed, you know, that the resources were different. I mean, the school was nicer. You know, there were, you know, nice, lush playing fields. And so I started to, you know, think about how resources are aligned with race. And it was like we were living in different worlds.

CHANG: And you mentioned something that was so interesting in the book when you were living in this new neighborhood, that you had all these white friends, and at one point, you realize as a young girl that you had trouble telling them apart.

EBERHARDT: That's right. I did. It was very destabilizing - right? - because you think to perceive a face is kind of a basic thing that we take for granted.

CHANG: Because you didn't have that problem differentiating between black faces when you were growing up in your previous neighborhood.

EBERHARDT: I didn't at all. It was only in this new neighborhood. And I think that the white students there felt like, oh, well, you're a new, you know, kid and having trouble remembering their names. But I actually could not tell their faces apart.

CHANG: Wow, that is fascinating. I want to turn to a lot of the research that you've done on how there is this really powerful association in people's minds between black men and crime, even for black cops. Can you explain what trains people to adopt that connection?

EBERHARDT: Well, part of it is a connection for police officers in the kinds of people that they're interacting with. And in a lot of, you know, major cities that are racially diverse, you know, there is a racial disparity in the violent crime rate. And so that association gets made sort of way beyond what the evidence shows. Part of what a stereotype is is that you're sort of applying your beliefs, you know, about the group to a particular individual. But it also works in this other way where you have a belief about particular individuals, and you can apply those beliefs about that subgroup to the entire group.

CHANG: You know, that makes me think about - I've talked to cops. I used to be a criminal justice reporter. And it's really hard to rewire the brain when it comes to split-second decisions, like when to pull a gun out, you know...

EBERHARDT: Right.

CHANG: ...For instance, or when to pull the trigger.

EBERHARDT: Right.

CHANG: How do you have time, they asked, to process all the new self-awareness bias training might give you...

EBERHARDT: Right.

CHANG: ...When you are reacting in the moment? Is it possible to really retrain a reflex like that?

EBERHARDT: Well, one way you can address that - right? - is not placing people in those situations. And so in Oakland, Calif., I've done a fair bit of work with the police department there. They decided to change their foot pursuit policies. And so instead of chasing someone, you know, they were told to step back and set up a perimeter and call for backup. And so you're allowing them to kind of work through what the strategy should be and so forth. And so they found that it affected officer injuries, and it also affected officer-involved shootings. You know, they can slow it down and think it through. They're less likely to have bias, you know, affect what they do.

CHANG: So help us understand that story you told in the book about the Uber driver who was driving you around in Charlottesville. And he kind of explained to you something very honest about how he felt towards black people.

EBERHARDT: Yes, he did. So I went to Charlottesville to get a better understanding of that Unite the Right march in 2017.

CHANG: Yeah.

EBERHARDT: I hop in an Uber to get to my hotel, and the Uber driver says to me, well, what brings you to town? And I thought, whoa.

(LAUGHTER)

EBERHARDT: I'm in the South, right? White Uber driver, you know, middle aged and, you know, could he be one of them? I said, hey, you know, I'm here because I'm writing a book on racial bias, and I'm here to talk to people about what transpired here. And he launched into this whole story about growing up with a black domestic worker in his home, and she was the most important person to him. She helped to raise him.

CHANG: He had so much tremendous affection for her.

EBERHARDT: Oh, so much affection. He went on and on telling me, and she'd just died, too, and so I think he was especially missing her and wanting me to know who she was. And so it was great, but then the tone changed. And he said there's bigotry in my veins. And I said, wow.

CHANG: (Laughter).

EBERHARDT: OK. So I'm getting a little nervous, and I can only see the back of his baseball cap - right? - 'cause I'm in the back seat. I couldn't see his expression or anything. And so I just asked him - I said, well, what did you mean? He says, well, I can feel it rising up. And I said, well, when can you feel it rising up? He said, when I'm outnumbered. You know, he said he lived in Florida, and he said he felt it there when he was outnumbered by Latinos. I just thought it was so honest.

CHANG: Do you see hope in someone like that? When you met him...

EBERHARDT: I do.

CHANG: Why? Why was that a hopeful experience for you?

EBERHARDT: It was hopeful because I could have decided to not say anything about the book I was writing or why I was there. And it felt like it was a gamble, frankly, to do that. But I decided I'm going to take the gamble. And I guess that's what I'd like people to get from the book, too, is just - I don't know. Don't turn away.

CHANG: Take a gamble.

EBERHARDT: Take a gamble.

CHANG: Yeah.

EBERHARDT: Yeah. I mean, try to connect and keep trying to work on this because the minute we turn away, the worse it gets.

CHANG: Yeah. Jennifer Eberhardt's new book is called "Biased: Uncovering The Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, And Do." She's a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Thank you so much for talking to us.

EBERHARDT: Oh, thank you.

(SOUNDBITE OF A REMINISCENT DRIVE SONG, "AMBROSIA")

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MacArthur Genius Recipient Jennifer Eberhardt Discusses Her New Book 'Biased'

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AILSA CHANG, HOST: Jennifer Eberhardt is a scientist, a social psychologist who studies how we interact with one another. For more than two decades, she has been unpacking implicit racial bias, how our perceptions of race play into our everyday interactions, even when we're not aware of it.

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Advance Opening Theater Buyouts

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Please complete the form below and a representative will contact you shortly. By providing my contact information above and pressing the Submit button below, I agree to be contacted directly via emails, texts and/or telephone calls by a Warner Bros. representative regarding Advance Opening Theater Buyouts for the Just Mercy motion picture.

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Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice

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In an engaging and personal talk -- with cameo appearances from his grandmother and Rosa Parks -- human rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson shares some hard truths about America's justice system, starting with a massive imbalance along racial lines: a third of the country's black male population has been incarcerated at some point in their lives.

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Documentary series on Asian Americans on PBS

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Documentary series on Asian Americans on PBS

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About the Show

Asian Americans is a five-hour film series that will chronicle the contributions, and challenges of Asian Americans, the fastest-growing ethnic group in America. Personal histories and new academic research will cast a fresh lens on U.S. history and the role Asian Americans have played in it.

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The history of identity, contributions, and challenges experienced by Asian Americans.

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Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis

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Bud, Not Buddy, by Christopher Paul Curtis

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Christopher Paul Curtis Interview - Part 1

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‘Piecing Me Together’ Novelist Says She Writes To Help Kids Feel Seen

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Renée Watson won the Coretta Scott King Award for her novel about a black student at a mostly white private school.

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Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

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Black Brother, Black Brother by Jewell Parker Rhodes

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New York Times bestselling author Jewell Parker Rhodes returns this year with her new middle-grade novel Black Brother, Black Brother - the inspiring and eye-opening book that's perfect for young readers. With such prestigious novels and awards under her belt, we wanted to know more about the woman behind all of the achievements. Get to know more about Jewell Parker Rhodes now in this exclusive She Reads interview.
Order your copy of Black Brother, Black Brother now!

@jewellparkerrhodes

What inspired you to write Black Brother, Black Brother?
Researching Ghost Boys, I learned elementary through high school students of color are often unfairly suspended and arrested. Once arrested even for minor infractions, the odds that a student will be entrapped by the criminal justice system and not graduate, double. Black Brother, Black Brother addresses this bias in schools.

My characters, Donte and Trey, are also inspired by my own experience raising two biracial kids (one, light-skinned; the other, darker). Skin color should not determine the ease with which one child is more fully embraced by society and the other is subject to racism. All children deserve equal treatment; one should not be privileged because of skin tone.
Why did you choose to write in the middle-grade genre? What kind of impact are you hoping this book has on young readers?
For decades, I wrote for adults trying to become good enough to write for the most important audience in the world - youth. I always try to affirm children's resilience, strength, empathy and intelligence.

Middle-grade is especially challenging as youth make the passage from childhood to young adulthood. My own middle years were difficult. (Sometimes I think I'm "rewriting" my own history through characters inspired by today's amazing youth.) Most importantly, I'm providing diverse mirrors and a "safe place" for students to discuss critical issues about identity, social injustice, family and friendship. Words are powerful; books open hearts and minds.
What are your top five favorite books of all time?
My "favorite books" change as my life changes. Right now, by Bryan Stevenson and When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi are enlightening favorites. From my parenting years, Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly, E.B. White's Charlotte's Web and George Selden's The Cricket in Times Square still deeply resonate.
Are there any books you're looking forward to reading this year?
Toni Morrison's The Source of Self-Regard and Damian Duffy and John Jennings' graphic novel version of Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower. I'm also looking to discover books on maps, mazes and climate change - research for my new middle-grade novel.
Name three essentials you'll be taking with you on book tour.
Almonds, Pique Tea Crystals for instant iced tea and moisturizer for my face and hair.
*Disclosure: The links above are affiliate links. These picks are editorially selected, but if you purchase, She Reads may get something in return. We are a participant in the Bookshop Affiliate Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Bookshop.org while simultaneously supporting local bookstores.

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An exclusive interview with Jewell Parker Rhodes - She Reads

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New York Times bestselling author Jewell Parker Rhodes returns this year with her new middle-grade novel Black Brother, Black Brother - the inspiring and eye-opening book that's perfect for young readers. With such prestigious novels and awards under her belt, we wanted to know more about the woman behind all of the achievements.

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Join the June Nineteenth nationwide weekend of action with the Movement for Black Lives. 

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Join the June Nineteenth nationwide weekend of action with the Movement for Black Lives. 

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Join the June Nineteenth nationwide weekend of action with the Movement for Black Lives. Together, we will #DefundThePolice and affirm that #BlackLivesMatter. Find an event near you.

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Creative Ecoystems & Funds that Support Black People

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Creative Ecoystems & Funds that Support Black People

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This list prioritizes Creative Ecosystems and Funds that support Black queer, trans, and nonbinary folks, and Black women.

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Creative Ecosystems & Funds that Support Black People

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Since the murder of George Floyd, and the subsequent global demonstrations of solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter, I have been consulting with organizations who are seeking to engage ever-accelerating conversations on race, diversity, justice, and inclusion. The question of how to practice allyship effectively is coming up over and over. The #BlackLivesMatter movement has been around much longer. Racist violence in America has over four-hundred-year history. But something new is emerging. My hope is we are finally ready to address systemic racism in the U.S. for real.

Source: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/927341

While my work includes consulting to leaders and organizations on diversity and inclusion, I am also a couple and family therapist with a private practice in New York. This means my work exists at the intersection of large organizational systems and the much smaller systems of individual families. It may surprise you to know that the anti-racism efforts we seek to support at both levels benefit from similar relational practices.

Collectively, let's understand that as we work for anti-racism in our workplaces, the same work must also take place in our homes as parents and life partners. Challenging systemic racism is not simply situational, it's generational as well. Taking up this work is a powerful learning space for all of us, as we design together frames for our communities' and our family's discussions about race. It's a story about activating our natural relational capacities for connection. It's about the power of conversations.

Parenting for Anti-racism will be a lifelong, ongoing conversation

Parenting can be thought of as one unbroken conversation made up of millions of moment by moment acts of relating, the back and forth of rich human expression and response, spanning the course of our lives. This life long conversation can be more intentionally designed or simply a by-product of all the daily tasks and moments life presents us as parents. More intentional parts of this conversation are often formed by what we see as our values. Do we value our child's happiness? Would we have them be a moral human being? To be financially successful? To make a better world? To stay safe? To not rock the boat?

In our everyday conversations and interactions, our children are not only learning what to do, but also learning how to be, including what to question or not question. It is in our daily conversations that we transmit our values to our children, right alongside our fears and our privileges. During times of crisis, our underlying values can be called into question, begging for a conversation recalibrating around what is important. Or perhaps we instead double down on business as usual, modeling our need to maintain the status quo. It's all signaled and confirmed in the daily conversations.

Our nation's 400-year-old history of racism - demands answers of us about how we are living and how we are raising our children. Do we seek to raise them to end racism? If so, how do we resource them to face the moral challenges of a world steeped in divisions and bigotry?

All of these questions we face and the solutions we seek as parents emerge in the back and forth of conversations with our children. How we engage with our children determines who each of us will become. As we shape our children, they shape us. Fortunately for us all, conversation, the moment by moment back and forth of relating, can be an incredibly powerful and generative force; a force for engaging change, a force to be reckoned with. We don't need to know all the answers. We simply need to look for what gets co-created in the conversations we share.

It is in conversation with us that our children learn to create frameworks for understanding issues around life's most challenging struggles. In many ways, how we model this process will reflect how our children view power. Parent-child conversations are the ground floor for exploring the interplay of difference, fairness, and power. These issues are not abstractions for our children, who begin life looking up at us like we are giants. We, who have the power to send them to their bedroom...who seem unreasonable when we tell them simply "because I told you so."

Justice, fairness, and respect are not abstractions for our children as we collectively learn how to create a family culture of belonging and respect for difference. It is in the family where children can learn that being different does not need to result in being othered. So how might we do this?

1. We can encourage conversations that highlight what makes us distinctive

2. We can hold space for uncertainty and engage with curiosity

3. We can manage challenging conversations by holding space for what is emerging.

These explorations of relating, useful in organizations as well, bring into being the relational skills and capacities by which our children will go on to untangle the difference between the personal and the social in all the ugly permutations of racism in America.

Race as a wider Interconnected, Intersectional Conversation

When your 5-year-old comes to you crying about how a child didn't play with him/her, how do you respond?

How do you respond to your 10-years-old who says she has a crush on a boy who thinks he is trans but he has not told his parents?

How do you respond to your 12-year old boy, who tells you that his best friend, who is a girl, was called a slut because of the way she dresses?

How do you respond to your 14-year-old being called a cracker-jack?

How do you respond to your daughter whose best friend wants her to join her at a beach house for a holiday weekend and it will cost you $2000 (or even $300) that you can't spare?

No matter how young, our children are out living life in the push and pull of the world. As early as age two, they know what bullying is. They are already experiencing how power plays out. The question for us is how can we invite age-appropriate conversations that allow us to help them frame their stories about what they see playing out around them?

Our conversations about racism are connected to any and all forms of domination and systems of oppression; sexism, religious bigotry, class bigotry. We raised our son to understand that making himself feel good by putting others down, by bullying others, is wrong. Bullying is the first conversation about power, a conversation we can have with our very young children. Bullying is the first place where we must publicly intercede and be seen by our children and others as committed to stopping it. Bullying is the appearance of dominance in its earliest form - an act which left unaddressed goes on to take the form of microaggressions, sexism, racism and other forms of entitlement that we see in our workplaces.

The conversation about race is an intersectional conversation. Who we are and where we come from effects and is affected by what is afforded to us. Thus, informing what we see, hear, and access thus shaping how we notice, talk, and relate. This is one's positionality. It is key to see how, in all areas of life, those who are white among us benefit from a wide range of affordances created by society. By taking on the racism conversation directly, we acknowledge the imbalances racism continues to bring. So what are some ways to talk about race, especially if we are white or non-black parents?

1. First and foremost: it is important to do our work to fully understand the meaning and history of terms like racism, racist, whiteness, dominance, invisibility, etc. View Forward Promise Director Dr. Howard Stevenson's TED talk on racial literacy and parenting.

2. Consider your circle of friends. For white parents, have your children seen BIPOC at your dinner table? If not, ask yourself why?

3. Don't insulate children or protect them from talking in age-appropriate ways about the larger social dialogues occurring today. See how Anthony Peterson talks with his grandchildren.

4. View age-appropriate movies and TV series that depict issues of Black history and racism. And, read books together! Jason Reynolds & Ibram Kendi's book Stampedwritten in an engaging style, traces the arch of racism (from 1415 to date) for young readers.

5. Model anti-racism: i.e. speak up not only in general ways against systemic issues of racism but against racist comments and acts. Don't tolerate it.

6. Share our own discomfort, contradictions, and paradoxes. By age 5 or so, kids can talk about their discomfort, they need you to walk alongside them as they explore this.

7. Avoid language like "be nice" or "play nice" in the context of racism.

8. Notice when you use the language of "life is unfair sometimes" or "lucky" to avoid having the larger systemic conversation about what produced that "good fortune."

9. Invite your children to share their own ideas of how to deal with power differentials, exclusions, and the subtle ways that bigotry continues to show up around us.

10. Here are a number of additional resources-check them out!

Lastly, Don't Essentialize. Instead, Engage.

Above all else, this conversation about racism in parenting, in the workplace, in our daily lives, is a conversation about how to grow our collective humanity. But as we prioritize addressing racism, we run the risk of reducing or essentializing BIPOC to their racial identity. We run the risk of seeing them as oppressed, positioning ourselves as the ones to lend a helping hand. We might fail to notice their multi-dimensionality, their intersectionality, their hard-earned privilege, thereby limiting our collective capacities to create change in the face of systemic racism. This is what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie identifies as the danger of single stories.

Parenting is messy. Conversations are messy. Making a better world is messy. Relationships and conversations are the places where we engage the messiness of life and create change. Human beings are born with powerful relational capacities for healing and connection, both in our family and work lives. In our search for the right or best answer, we can overlook that there are many pathways to connection. To notice race is to acknowledge the systemic nature of racism. To notice plurality is to notice the wholeness of each human being within the tensions of our world. To embrace the contradictions of life is to notice the messy, improvisational ways of mixing it up and finding the path together through trial and error of relating, curiosity, and humility.

As parents, we can learn to hold the confusion and the contradictions of our life long conversation on race, on how to end racism and become more fully human. As we manage the myriad of challenges of raising children in a racist society requires that we not enter into an either-or mindset. We can stay flexible. Hold uncertainty. Let our children help design what comes next for all of us.

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Parenting for Anti-Racism: A Lifetime of Conversations*

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Since the murder of George Floyd, and the subsequent global demonstrations of solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter, I have been consulting with organizations who are seeking to engage ever-accelerating conversations on race, diversity, justice, and inclusion. The question of how to practice allyship effectively is coming up over and over.

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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor

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Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred Taylor

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More than 40 years ago, Mildred D. Taylor's Song of the Trees introduced readers to the Logans, a Mississippi family only a couple of generations removed from slavery. That book was followed by the now-classic Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, which won the Newbery Medal and made Cassie Logan a literary heroine for the ages. All the Days Past, All the Days to Come is the final volume in the Logan saga, which has tracked the family through Jim Crow and the Depression, depicting the strength and love it takes to resist being dragged down by racism or torn apart by the winds of change. In this triumphant conclusion, Taylor brings the Logans through World War II, the Great Migration, and the civil rights movement, all the way to the Obama era.

In a rare interview, Taylor spoke with O books editor Leigh Haber about what's kept her focused on this one emblematic family over the decades.

When you created these characters, what did you hope to accomplish?

I wanted to be published! And I wanted to tell the story of a strong Black family, like mine. I was bothered by how Black families weren't represented as being whole-that they were without fathers, that men sired the children and left.

That wasn't your experience.

Not at all. Everyone I knew lived with their mother and father, as did we. My father's brothers were all married. That's all I have in my family-strong Black men and women. I wanted people to see them.

When you were growing up, were there books that reflected you?

No, there weren't. Not in textbooks, either. I remember being in fifth grade-we had just moved to a newly integrated neighborhood in Toledo-and I was one of the few Black kids in my new school, and the only one in my class. We were studying slavery and the Civil War, and the way the enslaved were depicted infuriated me.

They were portrayed as docile, accepting their fate without attempting to free themselves, devoid of any heroic or pride-building qualities. I knew differently, as my great-grandfather was born into slavery. What we were being taught felt like a condemnation of my ancestors, and of me.

What did you do?

I'd sit tensely, getting irate. Finally, one day I stood to answer a question and began telling them about my great-grandfather, whose father was a plantation owner, and his mother, a slave with American Indian and African ancestry. As I spoke, some students snickered, and the teacher didn't seem to believe me. I sat down, humiliated, and didn't talk about it again.

In high school, you finally found a fictional character you could relate to when you read and loved To Kill a Mockingbird.

I did. I found the relationship between Scout and Atticus very beautiful.

Scout and Cassie have some similarities, right?

Yes, Harper Lee and Scout were an important influence, but for Cassie, I drew on my own life and the stories I'd heard on our porch in Mississippi.

One of those stories became a scene in the new book, when Little Man is on a bus with Cassie, his sister. They're en route home to visit their parents. They're in the rear of the bus but keep having to sit farther back when more white passengers get on. A curtain on a rod separates the front and the back, and the driver keeps moving it, making the space for Black passengers ever smaller. That was inspired by a real incident?

Yes. One of my uncles was traveling home from Fort Hood before being sent off to World War II. He was drafted out of school and wasn't happy about having to fight in what he thought of as a white man's war, in a segregated army. On the bus, he got so frustrated about having to move farther back that he complained to the driver, which could have gotten him arrested. While still many miles away, he chose to get off the bus rather than put up with it.

You-and the Logans-have seen so much change. We think racial tensions are fraught now, but what evolution have you seen?

We were totally separated back then, so even with all the current turmoil it's not the same kind of feeling. In the 1960s, Blacks didn't want to deal with whites, and whites didn't really want to deal with Blacks. It's not perfect now, but it's much better.

How did you feel when President Obama was elected?

I was in Toledo with my 90-year-old mother and my uncles. None of us thought it would ever happen. It was a great night. We cried. Oh, my goodness, we went wild.
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"Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" Author Mildred D. Taylor Opens Up in a Rare Interview

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More than 40 years ago, Mildred D. Taylor's Song of the Trees introduced readers to the Logans, a Mississippi family only a couple of generations removed from slavery. That book was followed by the now-classic Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry , which won the Newbery Medal and made Cassie Logan a literary heroine for the ages.

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DAVID GREENE, HOST:

One of the more difficult things to talk with students about is race. A new book from a historian and a children's book author tries to tackle racist ideas in a relatable way for young adults. NPR's Elissa Nadworny has the story.

ELISSA NADWORNY, BYLINE: When you think about the history of racism, what comes to mind? Here's how Emani James, a 10th-grader in Washington, D.C., answered that question.

EMANI JAMES: I go back to, like, Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. We don't ever learn about what happened before then.

NADWORNY: Emani is an avid reader and does well in school, but she says she's only learned broad strokes about slavery. There was Harriet Tubman and cotton, but not much more.

EMANI: With history, people like to cut off certain parts that they don't want to tell us. Like, they're not going to tell us the deep, deep stuff.

NADWORNY: But Emani, she wants to know that deep, deep stuff.

IBRAM X KENDI: Getting deep, deep, deep - that really actually protects our young people.

NADWORNY: That's Ibram X. Kendi, a historian and professor at American University.

KENDI: We think we're protecting them by not getting deep; we're actually protecting them by getting deep, by allowing them to really understand this nation's history.

NADWORNY: In 2017, Kendi wrote an award-winning book about the history of racism. But that book was kind of academic, and Kendi, he wanted to make sure that young people, they knew about the history in it. So he begged Jason Reynolds, an award-winning children's book author, to make a remix of that book - a cool new version for young people.

JASON REYNOLDS: There's currency in cool, right? There always has been; there always will be. It matters to them; it mattered to me.

NADWORNY: At first, Reynolds actually told him no. He was a bit intimidated. He was a children's book author, he said, not a scholar. But eventually Kendi convinced him, and the task became translation.

REYNOLDS: I wanted to figure out how to make this really complex thing that he - all this information that he gave the world, how do I take it and make it feel like a fresh pair of Jordans?

NADWORNY: To make the book cool, Reynolds put cultural touch points, like song lyrics, throughout, bringing up Queen Latifah and Public Enemy to connect ideas about slavery and civil rights. Both Reynolds and Kendi are here at Columbia Heights Education Campus in D.C. talking with Emani and two other students about the new book. It's called "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, And You." Reynolds reads from Chapter 1.

REYNOLDS: (Reading) Some may believe race isn't an issue anymore, that it's a thing of the past, old tales of bad times. Others may be certain that race is like an alligator, a dinosaur that never went extinct but instead evolved, and though hiding in murky swamp waters, that leftover monster is still deadly. And then there are those of you who know that race and, more critical, racism are everywhere.

NADWORNY: Seeing race everywhere - that idea really connected with Amir Perkins, a high school junior. Reading "Stamped," he saw the connections between history and his everyday life living in D.C.

AMIR PERKINS: I like how he made me think about me, writing the book for everybody.

NADWORNY: As the book travels through history, it puts ideas and people into three categories. Here's Kendi and Reynolds breaking that vocab down.

KENDI: There's the segregationists, which Jason calls the haters.

REYNOLDS: The haters, yeah. Segregationists are haters. Haters are the people who hate you just because you ain't like them, right?

KENDI: And then there's the assimilationists, who are the likers.

REYNOLDS: Yeah, likers are your fake friends. You know what I mean? Everybody got - everybody know them, too, right? Everybody know the phonies. And they're basically the ones who - they like you, but they like you because you are like them, you know. That - it's contingent upon you being like them, you know.

KENDI: And then there's the anti-racists, who are the lovers.

REYNOLDS: And the lovers, you know, those are - you know, are day-ones, as we say. Those are the ones that we know are ride-or-dies - right? - the ones who love us for being like us.

NADWORNY: "Stamped" focuses on the history of racist ideas because ideas have power; they've been embedded into the structures of our society for centuries. One debunked but historically persistent idea that stood out to Emani is climate theory. The idea is that if African people lived in cooler temperatures, they would become white. This originally came from Aristotle, and even some of the folks who wrote the U.S. Constitution believed this idea.

EMANI: The climate theory - I was like, what?

NADWORNY: Ever since Emani read about it, she cannot stop thinking about it.

EMANI: If we lived in cooler temperatures, our skin wouldn't be the color it is now. Like - what?

KENDI: Makes no sense.

EMANI: What - that's what I'm saying. Like...

KENDI: Because even adults are fascinated by how, in early America, the leading racial theorists were climate theories. I mean, these are the types of figures who were basically articulating climate theory. And they thought that they were so smart (laughter).

REYNOLDS: Meanwhile, Emani's like, this just...

EMANI: Yeah.

(LAUGHTER)

NADWORNY: And that, it's the idea behind the whole book - to get young people to think about this stuff because history is mixed with the present, and no matter how old you are, the present is mixed with history.

Elissa Nadworny, NPR News, Washington.

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It's Not A History Lesson. New Book Tackles Racist Ideas

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DAVID GREENE, HOST: One of the more difficult things to talk with students about is race. A new book from a historian and a children's book author tries to tackle racist ideas in a relatable way for young adults. NPR's Elissa Nadworny has the story.

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Story for children about kindness

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Article about Racism and Rising above Injustice

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Article about Racism and Rising above Injustice

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Resist:  Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up Against Tyranny and Injustice by Veronica Chambers

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The idea of resistance is not new, but these days it feels like we are living in a constant state of heightened resistance in order to just uphold common decency, as well as American democracy.

Police disproportionately target black men, immigrant children are separated from their parents and kept in cages, threats to overturn Roe V. Wade have become increasingly real, and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of attempted rape. It's a good time to be reminded that even just one person can make a difference and effect large scale change.

Journalist Veronica Chambers is the author of a new book called Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up Against Tyranny and Injustice, in which she profiles a broad range of figures from both past and present who have taken a stand and changed the course of history.
Listen to Rebecca Carroll talk to Chambers on WNYC about her new book, below. Rebecca Carroll is a cultural critic and Editor of Special Projects at WNYC, where she develops, produces and hosts a broad array of multi-platform content, including podcasts, live events and on-air broadcasts. Rebecca is also a critic at large for the Los Angeles Times, and a regular columnist at Shondaland in addition to Gothamist. She is the author of several interview-based books about race and blackness in America, including the award-winning Sugar in the Raw, and her personal essays, cultural commentary and opinion pieces have been published widely.

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Rebel Commentary: Veronica Chambers On The Power Of Individual Resistance

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The idea of resistance is not new, but these days it feels like we are living in a constant state of heightened resistance in order to just uphold common decency, as well as American democracy. Police disproportionately target black men, immigrant children are separated from their parents and kept in cages, threats to overturn Roe V.

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0:00 / 5:01•Watch full video

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Sesame Street explain Black Lives Matter

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Protesters marched through New York City again on Wednesday in response to the police killing of George Floyd. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

Opinion
We must get it right this time or risk losing our democracy forever.

Protesters marched through New York City again on Wednesday in response to the police killing of George Floyd. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times

Our democracy hangs in the balance. This is not an overstatement.

As protests, riots, and police violence roiled the nation last week, the president vowed to send the military to quell persistent rebellions and looting, whether governors wanted a military occupation or not. John Allen, a retired four-star Marine general, wrote that we may be witnessing the "beginning of the end of the American experiment" because of President Trump's catastrophic failures.

Trump's leadership has been disastrous. But it would be a mistake to place the blame on him alone. In part, we find ourselves here for the same reasons a civil war tore our nation apart more than 100 years ago: Too many citizens prefer to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to give up political power, the perceived benefits of white supremacy and an exploitative economic system. If we do not learn the lessons of history and choose a radically different path forward, we may lose our last chance at creating a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy.

The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky famously said that "the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Today, the same can be said of our criminal injustice system, which is a mirror reflecting back to us who we really are, as opposed to what we tell ourselves.

Millions of us watched a black man in Minnesota lie on the ground for nearly nine minutes, begging for his life and calling out to his dead mother, while a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck, killing him, with his hand casually resting in his pocket - all in broad daylight in front of people screaming for the officer to stop.

Image

The memorial at the site of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Sunday. Credit... Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

Everyone knows that the police officers who killed George Floyd never would have been fired or arrested if a courageous black girl had not filmed the incident on her phone and posted it to social media. Deep down, we already knew this kind of thing happens to black people. All of us knew it when we watched Amy Cooper call the police on a black man who calmly asked her to put a leash on her dog. We knew it when we watched two white men in a pickup truck ambush Ahmaud Arbery and shoot him to death while he was jogging in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Ga. And we knew it before George Zimmerman stalked and murdered a black teenager named Trayvon Martin.

We know these truths about black experiences, but we often pretend we don't. As Stanley Cohen wrote in " States of Denial," many people "know" and "not-know" the truth about oppression and suffering. He explains: "Denial may be neither a matter of telling the truth nor intentionally telling a lie. There seem to be states of mind, or even whole cultures, in which we know and don't know at the same time."

In 1963, images of racist white police officers spraying fire hoses and siccing police dogs on young black protesters in Birmingham shocked the world and propelled many white Americans to join civil rights activists in challenging racial segregation. A similar dynamic has occurred with the images of George Floyd's death. Our nation suddenly caught a glimpse of itself in the mirror and people of all races poured into the streets to say "no more." Now the president seems to be itching for another civil war.

I will not pretend to have a road map that will lead us to higher ground. But for those who are serious about rising to the challenge, I will share a few of the key steps that I believe are necessary if we are to learn from our history and not merely repeat it.

We must face our racial history and our racial present. We cannot solve a problem we do not understand. Donald Trump would not be the president and George Floyd would not be dead if, after the Civil War, our nation had committed itself to reparations, reconciliation and atonement for the land and people that colonizers stole, sold and plundered. Instead, white people who enslaved blacks were granted reparations for the loss of their "property" while formerly enslaved blacks were given nothing - not even the 40 acres and a mule they were promised. Ever since, our nation has been trapped in a cycle of intermittent racial progress followed by fierce backlash and the emergence of new and "improved" systems of racial and social control. These cycles have been punctuated by various movements, uprisings and riots, but one thing has remained constant: A majority of whites persistently deny the scale and severity of racial injustice that people of color endure.

It's not enough to learn the broad outlines of this history. Only by pausing long enough to study the cycles of oppression and resistance does it become clear that simply being a good person or not wishing black people any harm is not sufficient. Nor is voting for Democrats or diversifying police forces. In fact, those efforts have not made much of a dent in ending abusive policing or mass incarceration.

There are many excellent books, articles and films that can help to put our racial moment in context. A good place to start if you are new to racial justice history and advocacy is Ibram X. Kendi's trio of books, "How to Be an Antiracist" "Stamped From the Beginning " and "Stamped," his young adult book co-authored with Jason Reynolds. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's book " From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation" and Ava Duvernay's film " 13th" are especially relevant now. And Andrea Ritchie's book " Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color" is essential reading, given the comparatively little attention that police killings of black women typically receive. Paul Butler's book " Chokehold" is an excellent exploration of police violence against black men - past and present. The documentary " Whose Streets?," depicting the aftermath of Michael Brown's murder and the uprisings in Ferguson, Mo., will open your eyes to the tragedies and triumphs of that period, as well as "blatant racism and hypocrisy on display from the powers that be," in the words of a writer in Rolling Stone magazine.

No matter your race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, sexual orientation or background, you have much to gain by deepening your understanding of how we got to this place. I recommend reading classics like James Baldwin's "The Fire Next Time, " Angela Davis's "Women, Race and Class" and the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, as well as books like "The Radical King," which feature writings and speeches of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that the mainstream media is inclined to ignore.

Read and organize study groups or book clubs. Begin the process of racial reckoning in your city, neighborhood, school, workplace and family. Demand that your school district adopt a racial justice curriculum. Join grass-roots organizers working for racial justice or donate to them. Insist that your social justice organization or faith community follow the lead of grass-roots groups like the Dream Defenders and commit to the political education of its members and the community they serve. Raise your voice and march with your feet.

We must reimagine justice. The days of pretending that tinkering with our criminal injustice system will "fix it" are over. The system is not broken; it is functioning according to its design. As Mariame Kaba, Alex Vitale and many others have persuasively argued, reform efforts typically prove futile, pouring money into police departments without removing their capacity to engage in systemic violence. A recent Op-Ed article in The Times, " No More Money for the Police," underscored the point:

"More training or diversity among police officers won't end police brutality, nor will firing and charging individual officers. Look at the Minneapolis Police Department, which is held up as a model of progressive police reform. The department offers procedural justice as well as trainings for implicit bias, mindfulness and de-escalation. It embraces community policing and officer diversity, bans "warrior style" policing, uses body cameras, implemented an early intervention system to identify problematic officers, receives training around mental health crisis intervention, and practices "reconciliation" efforts in communities of color.

George Floyd was still murdered. The focus on training, diversity and technology like body cameras shifts focus away from the root cause of police violence and instead gives the police more power and resources. The problem is that the entire criminal justice system gives police officers the power and opportunity to systematically harass and kill with impunity."

After decades of reform, countless commissions and task forces and millions of dollars poured into "smart on crime" approaches, the police behave with about as much brutality today as they did in 1966 when a group of young black men, so fed up with the abuse inflicted upon the black community, created an organization called the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

Given this history, it should come as no surprise that growing numbers of people are working to defund the police and reimagine justice. Our nation has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. More than 95 percent of arrests every year are for nonviolent offenses like loitering, fare evasion and theft. Some are arrested for selling loose cigarettes (which resulted in Eric Garner's being choked to death by the police) or minor forgery (which resulted in George Floyd's being suffocated to death by the police).

People are right to wonder - is this justice? Can't we design alternative approaches to poverty, drug abuse, mental illness, trauma and violence that would do less harm than police, prisons, jails and lifelong criminal records? Fortunately, the extraordinary protests sweeping the nation and the globe are beginning to have an impact. The Minneapolis school board unanimously approved a resolution on Tuesday to stop using police officers to provide school security, citing the department's culture of violence and racism. And on Wednesday, the mayor of Los Angeles announced that city officials may cut up to $150 million from the city's police budget "so we can invest in jobs, in health, in education and in healing." By Friday, the Minneapolis City Council president announced that the council was preparing to "dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department and replace it with a transformative new model of public safety." These developments reflect a long-overdue paradigm shift in our approach to race and criminal justice.

We must fight for economic justice. We cannot achieve racial justice and create a secure and thriving democracy without also transforming our economic systems. James Baldwin knew this back in 1972 when he wrote:

"The necessity for a form of socialism is based on the observation that the world's present economic arrangements doom most of the world to misery; that the way of life dictated by these arrangements is both sterile and immoral; and finally that there is no hope for peace in the world so long as these arrangements obtain."

Dr. King understood this reality even earlier, noting in a letter to his wife in 1952 that "capitalism has outlived its usefulness" and later urging his staff to move beyond civil rights to human rights and democratic socialism. W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P., became a socialist and gave a speech sponsored by the Wisconsin Socialist Club in 1960 noting: "Many of us believe and hope that socialism will and must come to this land. We see no other way." Before that, a host of other prominent people we revere embraced democratic socialism too, like Albert Einstein, Helen Keller and Paul Robeson. Einstein published an essay in 1949 titled " Why Socialism?" in which he states: "I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils [of capitalism], namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals." We celebrate these people as heroes today, yet we've been encouraged to forget that they all believed we must move toward some form of socialism.

No matter what you think about Bernie Sanders as a man or as a candidate - and I wish he was much better at addressing racial issues like reparations - we all owe him and countless organizers a debt of gratitude for pushing universal health care, paid family leave, free college education, a $15 minimum wage and many other economic rights into the mainstream. As Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has explained, the coronavirus crisis proved that Mr. Sanders was right all along - that health care and other economic rights should be considered part of our social contract, not special benefits for those who are lucky enough to be employed by companies that grant discretionary benefits. Nobody would have benefited more from Mr. Sanders's political revolution than black people, and yet the generational divide among black voters affected his campaign.

Younger black people seem to understand that the neoliberal Democratic politics of the past will not take us where we need to go, and they supported Mr. Sanders by significant margins in polls. We must work to create an economic system that benefits us all, not just the wealthy. If our nation was not so deeply divided along racial lines - and if so many white people were not revolted by the idea of their tax dollars helping poor people of color obtain education, housing and social benefits - we would most likely have a social democracy like Norway or Canada. Achieving economic justice requires we work for racial justice, and vice versa. There is no way around it.

If we fail to take these obvious steps, our democracy will remain in peril even if Mr. Trump is defeated in November. Police killings, uprisings and riots will remain a recurring feature of American life. The black-white economic divide is as wide today as it was more than 50 years ago. And the same divide-and-conquer tactics that were used to prevent multiracial alliances for economic justice in the 1800s and 1900s were employed yet again in 2016 with spectacular results, as white Americans fearful of losing political power because of profound demographic changes elected a former reality show billionaire to the presidency, a man who unleashed racist tirades against immigrants on the campaign trail and vowed to "make America great again" by taking us back to a time we supposedly left behind - perhaps the time of civil war. Unless we choose a radically different path now, our persistent racial divisions and oppressive political and economic systems may unravel our democracy sooner rather than later.

Frankly, I find it difficult to call our nation a "democracy" in light of the rampant voter suppression, the denial of voting rights to millions of people with felony records and our pay-to-play political system that allows billionaires and corporations to more or less buy politicians and elections. But if you're tempted to believe that voting Mr. Trump out of office isn't urgently necessary in November because the system is already rigged, please read Astra Taylor's book, " Democracy May Not Exist but We'll Sure Miss It When It's Gone."

Our only hope for our collective liberation is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love. In recent days, we've seen what it looks like when people of all races, ethnicities, genders and backgrounds rise up together, standing in solidarity for justice, protesting, marching and singing together, even as SWAT teams and tanks roll in. We've seen our faces in another American mirror - a reflection of the best of who we are and what we can become. These images may not have dominated the media coverage, but I've glimpsed in a foggy mirror scenes of a beautiful, courageous nation struggling to be born.

Michelle Alexander is a civil rights lawyer and advocate, legal scholar and the author of " The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness."
The Times is committed to publishing Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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Opinion We must get it right this time or risk losing our democracy forever. Protesters marched through New York City again on Wednesday in response to the police killing of George Floyd. Credit... Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times Our democracy hangs in the balance. This is not an overstatement.

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SFUSD: Talking About Race and Social Justice

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SFUSD: Talking About Race and Social Justice

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Novels

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

In an unforgettable novel from award-winning authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, two teens one black, one white grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes

After seventh-grader Jerome is shot by a white police officer, he observes the aftermath of his death and meets the ghosts of other fallen black boys including historical figure Emmett Till.

After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.

Graphic Novels

The graphic narrative history of the 2001 Cincinnati riots, told for the first time from the perspective of the participants. When Timothy Thomas, a 19-year-old black man, was fatally shot by police, the city broke out into nonviolent civil disobedience that was met with further police violence. This was the first major uprising of the 21st Century, matched only by the LA riots a decade before and the protests in Ferguson over a decade later.

Named to the 2018 Top Ten Great Graphic Novels for Teens list (Young Adult Library Services Association) and the New York Public Library's list of Best Books for Teens.

Alfonso Jones can't wait to play the role of Hamlet in his school's hip-hop rendition of the classic Shakespearean play. He also wants to let his best friend, Danetta, know how he really feels about her. But as he is buying his first suit, an off-duty police officer mistakes a clothes hanger for a gun, and he shoots Alfonso.

Nonfiction

This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work By Tiffany Jewell, Aurelia Durand (Illustrator)

Who are you? What is racism? Where does it come from? Why does it exist? What can you do to disrupt it? Learn about social identities, the history of racism and resistance against it, and how you can use your anti-racist lens and voice to move the world toward equity and liberation. This book is written for everyone who lives in this racialized society-including the young person who doesn't know how to speak up to the racist adults in their life, the kid who has lost themself at times trying to fit into the dominant culture, the children who have been harmed (physically and emotionally) because no one stood up for them or they couldn't stand up for themselves, and also for their families, teachers, and administrators.

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Family Resources for Talking about Race & Social Justice in the U.S. | SFUSD

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In an unforgettable novel from award-winning authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, two teens one black, one white grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension.

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GETTING THROUGH GRIEF: 10 WEEK ONLINE GRIEF SUPPORT PROGRAM (FOR WOC)

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GETTING THROUGH GRIEF: 10 WEEK ONLINE GRIEF SUPPORT PROGRAM (FOR WOC)

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We live in turbulent times and there is a great call for the collective to come together and fight the systems of white supremacist heteropatriarchy. How do we address and heal from racist misogyny? What can we do to be part of the solution?

If you want to dive deep into how to commit to anti-racist efforts and get comfortable with your discomfort around discussing and addressing race and racism, join me for my SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM 101 Online Workshops.

The Spiritual Activism 101 online workshop is an opportunity to come together to have sacred and spiritual conversation about how we can acknowledge our privilege, heal our race-related wounds and actively contribute to lasting, effective racial justice.

This 90 minute webinar replay includes:

curated discussion and education on anti-racism, internalized oppression and addressing whiteness/white supremacy,

space to share our hurts/struggles/frustration regarding race, gender and it's intersections,

intentional journalling to unpack our blind spots,

spiritual tools + practices to assist in committing to anti-racism + inclusion,

guided meditation + transformational breathwork to release and let go.

We will carve out sacred space, honour our challenges and cycle that shit up and out. Folks will leave feeling supported and empowered in their journey to better show up for themselves and the collective, and most importantly, in supporting people of colour (particularly Black and Indigenous folks).
Open to all hue-mans, especially white folks wanting to learn how they can better support PoC (especially Black + Indigenous womxn), PoC seeking help addressing internalized oppression and/or all those seeking spiritual tools + practices to assist in committing to anti-racism.
Folx will leave feeling more supported and empowered in their journey to better show up for themselves and the collective, and most importantly, in supporting people of colour (particularly Black and Indigenous womxn).

pon da replay below!

Interested in an in-person Spiritual Activism 101 Workshop? Bring me to your town or business! Holler at me here.

PRAISE
"...I wanted to say thank you. Truly. It was such a powerful seminar and I was so honoured to be a part of it. It has made me realize how much work I have to still do on my own issues, as well as the work that must be done on a larger level." - Alison McEwen, Lawyer, Ottawa, Canada
"[Rachel] gets into your head. She scared the S#!T out of me, then taught me how to pay attention and ways to move forward with grace and compassion."
- Barbara Kuhr, Co-Founder of WIRED Magazine, Montana, USA "Your Spiritual Activism 101 Webinar pushed all the right buttons and has given me the right language and tools to understand where I fit within the racist patriarchy, what work I still need to do to uncover my internalised oppression and draw boundaries to preserve myself in the anti-racist fight...thank you, so very much- for all that you do to help, support and challenge us POC, while also taking on the monster that is the white supremacist racist patriarchy!"
-Anu Priya , Fundraising Coordinator, Leeds, UK
"Just ... wow. Thank you. I'm kind of cracked down the middle right now, and I thank you for that. I am still scared and I'm still unpacking that fear, but yeesh -- thank you. I want all my friends and loved ones to watch this. Sharing! Also, the breath work was incredible." -Makenzie, Healthcare Technology, Wisconsin, USA

Spiritual Activism 101 is just the beginning, we have oh so much more work to do so let's keep diving deep!

(a) for White + white passing Folx

This online workshop is carefully curated for White and White-passing folks, particularly White womxn, to continue the sacred and spiritual conversation required for radical racial justice.
This webinar includes:

a deeper dive into anti-racism education and terminology (including spiritual bypassing and cultural appropriation);

practical exercises pulled from daily life to apply, discuss and share how to best act in allyship;

guided meditation to ground and connect; and

takeaway worksheet for reflection.

We will once again carve out brave sacred space, honour our challenges and cycle that shit up and out. Open to White folks wanting to dive deeper in learning how they can best support POCs, particularly BIWOCs, and add to their toolkit of spiritual practices to engage in authentic anti-racism.

PREREQUISITES: All those registering must have taken my Spiritual Activism 101 webinar or workshop.

Replay Available Now!

(b) For poc / mixed folx

This online workshop is carefully curated for POCs ONLY, particularly black + brown womxn, to continue the sacred and spiritual conversation required for healing our internalized oppression and racial trauma .

a deeper dive into the meaning and consequences of anti-blackness, internalized oppression and racial trauma;

spiritual tools for unearthing and healing from the grief caused by racial trauma;

shared discussion to share hurts and frustrations in a space ONLY for POCs;

guided visual imagery meditation to ground and connect in ourselves; and

takeaway worksheet for ongoing self-inquiry.

We will once again carve out brave sacred space, honour our challenges and cycle that shit up and out. Open to POCs seeking spiritual tools to unpack internalized oppression and heal trauma down the ancestral line.

PREREQUISITES: All those registering must have attended either: (a) my Spiritual Activism 101 webinar/workshop, (b) my WOC Talks workshop, and/or (c) recently engaged in other self-healing work addressing race + racism.

REplay Available now!

wanna donate to BIWOC healing? gift a seat to the webinar replay below

Getting Through Grief: 10 Week Online Grief Support Program (For woc)

Are you a womxn of colour seeking straight-forward support to transition into more joy?
Need guidance moving through grief on your own terms? This, is for you. Grief changes everything. It changes you. For better or for worse - the choice is yours. I can help.
The fact is, grief sucks.

It stems from all sorts of stuff in our lives - navigating racist patriarchy, death, heartbreak, burnout, loss of self, moving, pet loss, infertility, financial woes, parenthood, marriage etc. Moving through a white supremacist world as a womxn of colour is taxing on all levels - mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically.

Getting Through Grief is a 10-week, self-guided e-course for womxn of colour that will help you minimize the pain of grief and turn whatever you're dealing with into a launching point for more JOY.

YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO:

Nurturing guidance to help honour where you're at and transition into your power;

Weekly straight-forward exercises and worksheets to help you connect with your heart at your own pace;

Reflective meditation + journalling;

Transformational breathwork to aid in combatting the sads and boosting the glads;

A virtual yin yoga class (that you can do in your PJs!);

Private FB support group and a group coaching call for virtual peer support from folks who "get it" (which you can skip if you prefer to do the course on your own);

Practical tools and spiritual resources to help you cope with your ish;

Feeling seen, heard, supported and relieved!

THE RUNDOWN:

You'll receive an email every Sunday AM with curated content to help you dive into your loss, face the dark and embrace the light

You'll have the whole week to move through the content at your own pace and if you fall behind a week or more - no sweat! Go at your own pace, no problem mon

You'll get a live virtual Q+A Session AND a live group coaching call. You can engage as much or as little as you like

This is a self-directed course so everything is an offering...take + partake in what resonates, leave or omit the rest. Get through grief on your own terms.

JOIN MY INNER CIRCLE + BE THE FIRST TO KNOW WHEN THE NEXT SESSION OPENS!

PRAISE
"[Getting Through Grief] provided me with the perfect blend of space to dive deep into my thoughts and grief, and support to help me look forward. Rachel is so fun, approachable, smart and badass - she creates room for real talk and made all of the work approachable. [Getting Through Grief] provides a truly comprehensive toolkit for working through grief and loss." - Anonymous "I had to take some time in silence to reflect on [this] experience...So GRATEFUL that I have been blessed with you and your work in my life. Thank you." - Barbara Bye, Flint, Michigan "Rachel's grief course work material covers so many aspects of emotional well being. I came out of the course with a whole new set of tools to work with moving forward. Her questions and worksheets are thought provoking and inspiring and I left each week feeling lifted and supported." - Anonymous

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We live in turbulent times and there is a great call for the collective to come together and fight the systems of white supremacist heteropatriarchy. How do we address and heal from racist misogyny? What can we do to be part of the solution?

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Free Audiobook: Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

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Free Audiobook: Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

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Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis Audiobook - YouTube

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Are Prisons Obsolete by Angela Davis Audiobook Chapter 6

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Brené with Ibram X. Kendion How to Be an Antiracist

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Brené with Ibram X. Kendion How to Be an Antiracist

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Brené Brown: Hi everyone, I'm Brené Brown, and this is Unlocking Us. Today, I'm talking with Professor Ibram Kendi. He's a number one New York Times best-selling author and the Director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. He's also an ideas columnist at The Atlantic and a correspondent with CBS News. He is the author of four books, including Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. He has another book called, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, which he co-authored with Jason Reynolds, and it's a remix of the Stamped from the Beginning book that is meant for YA, teen readers - an incredible, incredible book. And he's got a new book coming out called Antiracist Baby, which is a board book that will be published this month in June. Completely evidence that it's never too early to start talking about anti-racism.

BB: He's also the author of How to Be an Antiracist, and that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about all those books, but we're going to really focus on How to Be an Antiracist, which is a groundbreaking approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves. It's an incredible conversation. I welcome you to the table to sit with us, talk, think, feel, ask, question, and lean in really, really far to what we need to learn about ourselves and the world. I want to start this conversation with a quote from Professor Kendi: "By not running from books that pain us, we can allow them to transform us. I ran from antiracist books most of my life, but now I can't stop running after them, scrutinizing myself and my society, and in the process changing both." Let's jump in.

BB: Alright, first let me say that I am incredibly grateful for you joining us on Unlocking Us, thank you for that.

Ibram X. Kendi: Of course, I'm so happy to be on.

BB: I always start these podcasts with not the perfunctory, but the honest, "How are you?" How are you doing right now?

IK: I'm okay. This is quite the time in American history, and as someone who studies anti-Black racism, I'm simultaneously enraged to see the deathly effects of that racism, but simultaneously energized to see all of the people resisting that racism.

BB: How are you holding up with the COVID-19 pandemic on top of all of this, as the underscore to all of this?

IK: I think that that has been difficult for me, partly because my colleagues and I, we partnered with the COVID Tracking Project to build this COVID racial data tracker. And so we're... It's like the premier tracker of racial data on COVID. And so I'm seeing the data coming in and the disparities all over the country, and so that's been difficult. And then simultaneously, my wife, Sadiqa, her family is... Her hometown is Albany, Georgia, and Albany, Georgia and that general area of Southwest Georgia has one of the worst outbreaks in the country. And simultaneously, it's a trauma desert, it doesn't have a tremendous amount of high-quality healthcare, in contrast to New York City, which also of course has been a major outbreak. And so, seeing and hearing those stories firsthand of people suffering, obviously, it's been difficult. And this is a primarily Black area.

BB: I want to get into... I want to talk a lot about How to Be an Antiracist, your book that I think is life changing. I want to talk about your new book that's coming out in a couple of weeks. Tell us the title of that new book.

IK: Antiracist Baby. It's a board book.

BB: I can't wait. I want to start because when we talk about the pandemic, when we talk about what's happening right now in the world with a rebellion, the protest, you wrote an article that went up on The Atlantic this morning.

IK: Yes.

BB: It's called "The American Nightmare: To be Black and Conscious of Anti-Black Racism is to Stare Into The Mirror of Your Own Extinction." I want to... Can I read a piece of this to you and ask you about it?

IK: Sure, yeah.

BB: Would you rather read it or would you... Can I read it to you?

IK: Yeah, you can read it. That's fine, yeah.

BB: Okay. You're using as an epigraph, a quote from Malcom X from 1964, "We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare." And then you write, "A nightmare is essentially a horror story of danger, but it is not wholly a horror story. Black people experience joy, love, peace, safety. But as in any horror story, those unforgettable moments of toil, terror, and trauma have made danger essential to the Black experience in racist America. What one Black American experiences, many Black Americans experience. Black Americans are constantly stepping into the toil and terror and trauma of other Black Americans. Black Americans are constantly stepping into the souls of the dead because they know that could have been them, they are them. Because they know it is dangerous to be Black in America because racist Americans see Blacks as dangerous. To be Black and conscious of anti-Black racism is to stare into the mirror of your own extinction."

BB: This is not just about the police brutality; this is not just about Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd; this is about the tens of thousands of Black victims of Covid.

IK: Yeah.

BB: Talk to me about this article. What do we need to understand?

IK: Well, I think first and foremost, the article revolves around a very, very prominent book that was written in 1896 by Frederick Hoffman, who, basically it was a book of statistical tables and racial data that showed not only racial disparities in crime rates, but also racial disparities in infection rates and racial disparities in mortality, or I should say death rates, and so he took this massive amount of racial data to proclaim that Black people were not subjected to racist policies. That wasn't the cause of Black disease, of Black death, and even Black people being disproportionately arrested and incarcerated. He made the case that this data shows that Black people are headed towards gradual extinction, and it's their fault. They are by nature or behavior, a dangerous, diseased, dying people, and to recognize anything else is to not recognize the facts. And so this idea, normalizing Black pain and suffering and death has only continued to this day, and so essentially when you normalize, when you just believe that Black people should be disproportionally dying of police violence or even COVID-19, you're thereby not going to challenge, let alone look for the policies that are actually behind this disproportionate Black death.

IK: And so then those who are experiencing those policies that are then leading to that trauma and terror, and even toil, they're going to be experiencing the American nightmare. And the reason why I use the term the American nightmare is because Black people are constantly told that America is this land of equal opportunity, that police officers protect and serve, that we too have access to the American dream. And obviously, based on the experiences of Black people, we've really, as Malcolm said, 50 years ago, experienced the American nightmare.

BB: When you talk about the Hoffman book, it's such a devastating reminder to me, because I see this a lot right now of how statistics, academics, science can be dehumanizing tools as much as kind of the language that we use.

IK: Yeah, without question. And let me give an example. So when we first were able to start getting states in early April to release racial data, and then we saw these racial disparities. We saw that Black people were disproportionately being infected and even dying, of COVID. The first response of people to that data, of many people to that data, was to say Black people are not taking the virus seriously, Black people are not socially distancing, there's something wrong with Black people, and then we were able to disprove that. Basically survey data in mid-March had already proven that actually Black people were taking the virus more seriously than white people. So then it's zeroed in to, well, it must be the result of Black pre-existing conditions.

IK: And then those pre-existing conditions are caused by Black people making disproportionately bad or unhealthy behaviors. So it just always, essentially, you take these racial disparities, and we've been arguing over their existence, even before Frederick Hoffman. Is it because there's something wrong with Black people, or is there racist policy? And those who believe we live in a nation that's post-racial, that there's equal opportunity, they're not going to ever see the racist policies that are even in many cases, hard to see, instead they're just going to blame Black people.

BB: It's almost, and I don't think it's almost, it is the confirmation bias of racist beliefs.

IK: It is, yeah, it is. And that's what's striking about Frederick Hoffman, because he opens his book arguing that, "I am free of bias. I am free of prejudice or sentimentally."

BB: Which should be our first flag, right?

[chuckle]

IK: Exactly, right. And then, ends the book stating that the gradual extinction of Black people is only a matter of time, and it's based on the data. And to give another example, you have many people arguing that police violence, disproportionate police violence is the result of Black people being disproportionately violent, and Black people are disproportionately violent, they say, because, well, just look at the violent crime data. There's this widespread belief that Black neighborhoods are more dangerous because of violent crime data, the same violent crime data that Frederick Hoffman in this book in 1896 really popularized. But what Americans don't realize, and this is what I've been trying to get people to see, is that there's no relationship between the violent crime in those neighborhoods and the Blackness of the people.

IK: In other words, people believe that the reason why those neighborhoods are violent is because there are Black people there, and that's why when they see Black neighborhoods, they assume that those neighborhoods are violent because the Black people and their culture and their behavior and even their genetics are predisposed to violence. But if that was the case, then all Black neighborhoods would have the same levels of violent crime. In other words, higher income...

BB: Because that would be the... Yeah, that would be the consistent variable.

IK: Precisely. And so, higher income Black neighborhoods would have the same levels of violent crime as extremely impoverished Black neighborhoods. That is not the case. And it's not the case in white America, it's not the case in Asian America, Native America, Latinx America. In every America, if we want to split up America racially, you have higher levels of poverty, long-term unemployment, you're going to have higher levels of violent crime, whether you're talking about a white community or neighborhood with higher levels of violent crime or Latinx or Black. So we know statistically that actually what is the consistent variable is poverty and unemployment. But people still want to call these dangerous Black neighborhoods as opposed to dangerous unemployed neighborhoods.

BB: One of the things that I find so powerful about your work, there are many things, but one of the things I find so powerful is your ability to unpack things, lay them out, and the steps always lead back to policy. It always leads back to systemic policy.

IK: And I think that's one of the things I'm trying to get people to realize, and especially, I think one of the things that happens with our discussions on race is we personalize groups, meaning we make groups into individuals, and, even though every group is made up of individuals, we say, "Oh well, this group is disproportionately obese, so therefore, why can't this group "diet or exercise more" in the way I used to do when I weighed a little bit more. But that's actually... We can't think of groups as individuals, when we think of... Especially we can't think of disparities as the result of the personal choices of the individuals in groups, because I think that's what happens, that's how we have been misled into believing, but when we actually... All of the data points to and all of the analysis points to, is that when you have two groups, there's going to be all different types of behaviors in both groups, whether that...

BB: Complete variance, right?

IK: Precisely. So you take white people and Black people, you have white people who eat unhealthy, you have white people who are vegans, you have Black people who eat in an unhealthy manner, and then you have Black people like me who are vegans. And so... And then you have vegans who are white, who don't really eat vegetables. Right? And so it's so much variable, and so we emphasize the negativities that we see among those individuals who are Black, and then ignore the negativities among the individuals who are white. And so we say, "Oh, those Black folk and their soul food, that's why they're unhealthy," as if you don't have white people who gathered this weekend and had hamburgers and hot dogs only on their barbeque menu. So I think that it's critically important for us when we think of groups and group inequality, to recognize that what changes communities, what changes groups, it's not their individual behaviors, it's policy change.

BB: I want to slow down here and go into slow motion for a moment, because, what you're saying is so profoundly important at the crux of, I think, of your entire book. And for me as a researcher, it's... We take groups and we take stereotypes and characteristics of groups, and what it seems to me that we do, and I think you write about this, but I want to check in with you to make sure I'm understanding it correctly because this is what I see. We see the most kind of negative, socially agreed upon, not good characteristics of groups of color, and we assign it to the entire group. Then we take the best characteristics of one or two people in the white folk group and assign it to that entire group. That's true, right? You see that...

IK: Exactly. So that's what I talk about how we generalize the individual negativities of people of color while we individualize the individual negativities of white people.

BB: And you know what keeps coming back to me, and I'm going to date myself with this because this was a huge raging issue as I was in school and then graduate work: the bell curve is such an example of the manipulation of statistical data to confirm a racist hypothesis. Okay. Yeah, I just... You know what? We do that. We do that. I can think of times when I do that, maybe not about race, but I do do that with... I'll tell you where I do it. I do it with political identity. I take the best part of the people I see in my group and assign it to everyone in my group. And the worst part, and it's so self-protective and self-destructive at the same time, isn't it?

IK: It is. It is. And I know How to Be an Antiracist, in particular, I remember giving a talk about this book, I believe I was in Gainesville, Florida, and this woman who was obviously a Republican or a conservative, got up during the Q&A and basically challenged me, basically by saying, "You're just another liberal who is just criticizing conservatives completely and never being able to look back on the problems of things that liberals do." And I was like, "Did you read the book?" [laughter] Because obviously, you didn't read the book, because the book was just as critical of people who identify as liberals or Democrats as people who identify as conservatives and Republicans.

BB: I want to read something from the book, early-on pages. Is it weird when I read to you? Is it okay?

IK: It's fine, yeah.

BB: Okay. "The good news is that racist and antiracist are not fixed identities. We can be a racist one minute and be an antiracist the next. What we say about race, what we do about race in each moment determines what, not who, we are." And you write, "I used to be racist most of the time. I am changing. I am no longer identifying with racists by claiming to be not racist. I am no longer speaking through the mask of racial neutrality. I am no longer manipulated by racist ideas to see racial groups as problems. I no longer believe a Black person cannot be racist, I am no longer policing my every action around an imagined white or Black judge trying to convince white people of my equal humanity, trying to convince Black people, I am representing the race well." This book is incredibly vulnerable in terms of you sharing your own experiences. Why was that important to you as you were writing this?

IK: So, I remember when I was thinking about this book and I was sort of thinking about the pulse of the book, even the heartbeat of the book. I recognize that the heartbeat, historically, of racism has been denial, has been to deny that one's ideas are racist, one's policies are racist, and certainly that one's self and one's nation is racist, and so then I was like, "Okay, by contrast, the heartbeat of antiracism is confession, is admission, is acknowledgement, is the willingness to be vulnerable, is the willingness to identify the times in which we are being racist, is to be willing to diagnose ourselves and our country, and our ideas, and our policies." And the reason why that's the heartbeat is because, like with anything else, the first step is acknowledging the problem. We can't even begin the process of changing ourselves, of acting in an antiracist fashion, if we're not even willing to admit the times in which we're being racist. And so I realize that essentially to be antiracist is to admit when we're being racist. And so I realize that in order to really give voice to that, in order to really model that for people I had to do that to myself and for myself.

BB: And you do it, and you do it throughout the book and you move forward a bunch and you slide back, and you share that with us. To me, that is the heart of the book, that there is such a deep humanity in this book. Was that intentional on your part? Did you write it from a perspective of, "This is what it means to be in the human struggle?"

IK: I think so. And I mean, I think that, to be honest, the first few chapters were a huge struggle for me to write, precisely because of how vulnerable I had to be and how many... I had to basically admit and chronicle some of the most shameful moments of my life, especially as someone who was raised in a home to value and love Black people, to be able to have to write about those times in which I did not value or love Black people, let alone other groups, was very, very difficult. And so it really wasn't... And so I think I struggled and it actually... I think the first few chapters, it took me almost like a year to write, and it really wasn't until as I write about in the end of the book that I was diagnosed with cancer, that I just wondered whether indeed I would even live to see the book come out, and I think because of that, in a way freed me to be vulnerable and to be completely sort of open and naked in writing the book.

BB: Yeah, there's just courage on every page. I mean, really, and I have to say you don't see that very often in books. You don't see that very often in the world, so thank you for that. I think the central message is that the opposite of racist isn't not racist, The true opposite of racist is antiracist. Can you break that down for us and help us understand how the opposite of racist is not, not race... Not racist is not the opposite of racist.

IK: Sure, so I think... Let me say it in this way. So when you think of... So I define a racist as someone who is expressing racist ideas or supporting racist policies with their action or inaction, I know we're not supposed to use terms in the definition, but I think what's critical about understanding what it means to be racist is understanding what a racist idea is, and what a racist policy is. And once you understand what a racist idea and racist policy is, you begin to realize that there's a fundamental contrast to that, and that contrast is not some sort of neutrality. And so if a racist idea is any idea that suggests a racial group is superior or inferior to another racial group... In other words, a racist idea connotes racial hierarchy, then what's the opposite of that? The opposite of that is ideas that connote racial equality, that challenges directly that idea of racial hierarchy and says, "No. All the racial groups are equals."

IK: And there's no in between racial hierarchy and racial equality. Either all the racial groups are equals, or certain racial groups are better or worse than others. And so there's no not racist idea, there's only a racist idea and an antiracist idea. And the same thing with policy. If a racist policy is leading to racial inequity, then an antiracist policy is leading to racial equity. There's no in between inequity or equity, and if racist policies lead to injustice, then by contrast, antiracist policies lead to justice. There's no in between injustice or justice. And so then when you take a person, you have people who are either expressing racist or antiracist ideas. So in any given moment, they're either being racist or antiracist, there's no not racist sort of category.

IK: And then I should also add very quickly that when people typically say, "I am not racist," it is in response to someone challenging something that they just did or said that indeed probably was racist. So again, I mentioned how the heartbeat, or in order to be antiracist, we have to be willing to admit the times in which we're being racist. By contrast, in order to be racist, we never admit the times in which we're being racist, and instead we say we're not racist.

BB: I have a couple of questions. So what do you say to the person who when you say we're either racist or antiracist to the person who says, "That's a false dichotomy. There can be neutrality between antiracist and race, there can be neutrality between injust and just, between inequality and equity or equality." I can't find what that neutrality is. But I would really love to know how you answer that because I get that a lot, especially when I quote you, but I can't think of a single example, because the systems are already in place. So if we were at net zero, how does that... I mean, it may be so but we're not, so what do you answer?

IK: Yeah so I state that are you... I would... So people have asked me asked that, and typically what I state say is, "Are you stating that because from a defensive posture?" In other words, you don't want to identify as racist, and you view those antiracists in some way that you don't want to sort of identify with. So this is fundamentally defensive so you can create a category for yourself. And typically, we know when people are creating categories for themselves because you can't define your category. And so are you creating this category for us, or are you creating this category for yourself? And if you're creating it for us, then define it for us, so we can understand it.

IK: What does it mean to be not racist? I know what it means to be racist. I know what it means to be antiracist. What does it mean to be not racist? And if you can't provide a very clear and consistent definition, then that shows me that you're fundamentally being defensive, and you're fundamentally seeking to create a category for yourself.

BB: That is so powerful, and starting with the defensive posturing that I think there are people that don't want to be in the racist category of course, because there's so much shame attached to that.

IK: Yeah.

BB: And they don't want to be in the antiracist category because there's so much frickin work attached to that.

IK: Yes.

BB: Do you know what I mean?

IK: Yes.

BB: Like antiracism work is, no joke, exhausting and vigilant, and there's shame in it too because it's... So it's interesting because - can we dig into something that is kind of at the intersection of your work and my work to help me figure out something?

IK: Sure.

BB: You don't seem to be... And I've only read this book and a couple of articles that you've written or maybe three or four articles from The Atlantic, but I will be getting the baby board book for sure. And it'll become my new go-to, like, I'm looking at Barrett, who's in here with me. She's like, "This will be the new. Every baby we know will be getting this book." You don't seem to be a proponent of shame as a social justice tool.

IK: No.

BB: So, let me ask you this question because I think this goes to the creating categories out of defensiveness. One of the things that I've seen and I see it a lot, I see it a lot in my social feeds, I see it a lot when I have really difficult Q&As when I'm on book tours. Let's say you and I are talking, and I share a racist idea, or I make a racist statement, and you hold me accountable for that. Right? Which is fair. You question and we dig in. But you say... I am going to feel shame about that, for most, I think most, maybe not all, but most white, I hope, most white Americans, or maybe Americans in general will feel shame about being held accountable for racist thinking or thoughts or speaking, then I go into shame. But what I'm struggling helping people understand and maybe you can share your thoughts on it with us is being held accountable for racism and experiencing shame around that, is not the same as being shamed about racism.

IK: Mm-hmm, yeah.

BB: Does that makes sense to you at all? Or am I off? I don't know.

IK: No, I think it makes sense. And I think that... Well, two things I'm trying to think of what to say first because I feel like I'll forget the other. Do you ever feel that way?

BB: All the time.

IK: So I think one thing is that... So if we talk about racist ideas, to grow up in America is to grow up, and for racist ideas to constantly be rained on your head and you have no umbrella. And you don't even know that you're wet with those racist ideas, because the racist ideas themselves cause you to imagine that you're dry.

BB: Right.

IK: And then someone comes along and says, "You know what, you're wet, and these ideas are still raining on your head. Here's an umbrella." You can be like, "Thank you, I didn't even realize I was drenched."

BB: Yeah, yeah.

IK: And then with all these ideas, and then the question, this is why I don't think people should feel ashamed, is there were other people and very powerful people in a history that was constantly raining those ideas on your head, and so what that means is, for instance if you're a white American, who has racist ideas, and then you, let's say, perpetuated those ideas by, let's say, not hiring a Black person because you thought they were lazy. You were simultaneously a victim and a victimizer. And so I think it's critical for people to recognize that literally, and as I talk about in How to Be an Antiracist, there's a specific reason why you had so many powerful Americans trying to convince white Americans that Black people were inferior; it was out of their own self interest.

BB: Yeah.

IK: And so then, white Americans and other Americans were tricked into believing that Black people should be enslaved in 1855, and then meanwhile poor whites, whose poverty was directly the result of the riches of white slaveholders were like, "Yeah, it should be this way." And so then those people were able to get richer and richer, and so me coming to that poor white person who believes Black people should be enslaved and then who have even sort of worked on slave patrols and brutalized Black people trying to run away, I'm basically coming to them and saying, "Here is the way you were a victimizer and here is the way you were a victim." And it's critically important, I think, for people to understand, people have been tricked, they've been manipulated, they've been hoodwinked, and that's why I think, that's what I'd want people to realize.

BB: Yeah, thank you for the umbrella. I didn't know I was wet. I think that might be where we lose people.

IK: Yeah.

BB: Wow. Do you ever... I think about this, I think my background is in social work, so I have my master's in social work and PhD in social work, and my bachelor's too, and so I've probably taken 20 classes on the nature of oppression. I guess the thing that always strikes me about oppression as a construct, and I know I'm going to personify it, and I know this is probably not right, but I would love your thoughts on it because I've tried to figure it out for so many years is, God, it's so hard to fight because it has an answer for everything, like it is...

IK: Yeah, yeah.

BB: Do you know what I mean?

IK: Mm-hmm.

BB: Like, it's such a formidable foe. It's like every time, like when you said to me, I got goosebumps when you said, "It's raining on you. But part of what it's raining on you is the message that you're dry."

IK: Mm-hmm.

BB: It is such a formidable foe, isn't it?

IK: It is, and that I think that it's critically important. What I'm trying to do is bring people back into reality, right? So they can realize that it's being rained on them, that that rain is coming down on their head, that they're slipping and falling and harming people in ways that they don't even realize. And when you step that back into reality, then you can actually recognize what's actually happening to you and what you're doing to other people. And then you can also begin to see how and why you have people protesting all over this country and why people are enraged and why that resistance is going to continue. Literally racist ideas, literally separate people from reality, and it prevents people, even too, from helping themselves.

IK: And so I talked a lot in my book about the ways in which even you have Black elites who believe ideas about the Black poor and who sort of reproduce racist ideas about the Black poor, not realizing that racist policies against them are being justified through ideas about the Black poor, or you have white Americans who are believing in racist ideas that these people of color will just use and abuse and take advantage of so-called social entitlement programs like Medicare for All, or increasing Social Security funding, or basic income, or other... Or paid leave, things that other countries have. And so therefore, I don't want none of that. And then it results in them not having the social safety net when they fall, their friends not having it, their family not having it, and then when they fall and become hurt, then they're told it's immigrants' fault. And so it's this constant sort of people being hurt...

BB: God.

IK: And then they believing that it's these other people who are the source of their pain, as opposed to the people who they actually support, who are the source of their pain.

BB: I'm a terrible podcast host, because I'm sitting here with my hands over my mouth, and that's not... I can't do that, but that's my response to this. I read an article, I think it was during the 2016 election, all I can remember is an MD-PhD, public health person, and I think the name of the article is: "Racism is Killing White People." And it's because they were voting against the very things, the services, and the safety nets that they themselves will need just because of the racist rhetoric that they attached to it.

IK: Exactly.

BB: It's...

IK: Yeah, Jonathan Metzl and that's based on his book Dying of Whiteness. And he talked about...

BB: Is that the who that... Is he an MD? Is that the one I'm talking about?

IK: MD-PhD, yes, yeah.

BB: My husband's a pediatrician, I think I read it in, there was an excerpt of something in American Pediatrics or something. So tell us who that was and what that book was, and we'll put it on our show notes.

IK: So yeah, it's Jonathan Metzl, who's a MD-PhD, I believe at Vanderbilt, and his book was entitled Dying of Whiteness, and he looks at the white resistance to the extension of ObamaCare or even the extension of Medicaid in particular states and how that not only harmed, obviously people of color disproportionately, but even white people, and how the resistance to creating more insurance and affordable healthcare has harmed white people, let alone people of color, or even probably the most striking aspect of that book was so he not only looked at healthcare, but even the massive debate currently over gun control.

BB: Gun control.

IK: And gun safety and gun rights, and how first and foremost, you've had white men who have been advocating for the reduction or elimination of gun safety laws so that they can arm themselves, so that they can protect their families against Muslim terrorists and Black criminals and LatinX invaders as they call them. And what's fascinating is those very states where they've been able to successfully eliminate these gun safety policies, it's led to a massive surge in people being killed, white men being killed by hand gun via suicide, so the very people, white men who've been pushing for the reduction in gun safety laws have then led to them, given them greater ability to accumulate guns, and they've used those guns to kill themselves, so literally, people are dying of whiteness.

BB: Can I just ask you just like a no bullshit question here?

IK: Mm-hmm.

BB: Why does that make so much sense to some of us and no sense, it seems, to other people? Why do some of us see the through line and some of us don't see the through line? Do you understand what I'm asking? It's a weird question.

IK: Yeah, yeah. I think first and foremost, because we're living in different sort of realities, and so, for many of these white men who are advocating, who are proud card-carrying members of the NRA, who are advocating for the accumulation of weapons by white men, they believe... I should say they've been made to believe that the cause of their own personal pain, the reasons why they're struggling in society or they do don't have more than they already have, is because of these immigrants and these people of color. They also generalize, when there's a Black person who commits murder, or a LatinX immigrant or a terrorist who commits murder, in their mind, those are the central sort of problems that are harming America and are threatening them. And so they're in tremendous amounts of fear, because they're constantly told by their politicians, by the people they listen to, that these are the people you should fear, and then they're told, "Your rights are being taken away. White men are being chastised and criticized, and demeaned by women, by people of color, by everybody, and so we are your defenders and you need to defend yourself through these weapons."

IK: And, but then what's happening is they're actually getting these weapons and killing themselves, and then all of those individual suicides are individualized, so there's not this collective national outcry about the incredible level of white men who are committing suicide, because, again, if something bad happens to white people, it's individualized.

BB: I've just been thinking a lot about your book around the How to Be an Antiracist book, and I've been thinking about how there is a very short distance in my mind between the dehumanizing dog whistle language from this administration to calling the cops on a bird watcher, to George Floyd. And it's my training, again, I think in social work systems theory, that these things lie on a continuum, but that that walk is very short between these things. Do you agree with that or disagree with that?

IK: Oh yeah, I agree. I mean, I actually tweeted out last week after we heard about what happened to George Floyd, that we should be seeing that, I think I said something to the... Well, let me just say the idea, and that is, when it comes to police violence, oftentimes the beginning of police violence is someone, and in this case, a white woman calling the police saying, "A Black male is threatening my life. I need your help, come help me," when indeed she is actually the person who's threatening the other person, but anyway, she calls up the police, and then the police come, imagining that there's this so-called Black super predator who's preying on this innocent white woman, and that it is their job principally to protect them, and so, then they come imagining the need for force. And then Christian Cooper ends up as George Floyd in Minneapolis.

BB: In a split second.

IK: In which an unarmed person is now dead. And so, there's a very straight line from Central Park to Minneapolis, and we understand because that was essentially the lynching era, but that lynching era has continued.

BB: And I think I would back the line up, because I think for me, a big part of my studies was dehumanization and the process, and the very invisible process of dehumanizing, which every genocide in recorded history starts with dehumanizing and starts with language. So when we hear things like, when we talk about immigrants and the White House uses words like infestation, and when we use words like... I don't even think I've ever heard white people referred to as thugs in my life. It's people have a very hard time understanding that once we move people outside of what we believe is humanity, that it's possible to do anything to them.

IK: It is. And I think that is the reason why when you have those racist ideas that cause you to demonize people of color, and then that is combined with racist policies that are over-policing their neighborhoods, or allowing police officers who kill them to not be prosecuted, or to get off, it only continues this cycle that not only do they not matter to me, they don't even matter to the state.

BB: Right. You wrote something, I think this was a quote from the New York Times, and I feel like I could talk to you for... I hope you come back again, and we can talk more about all the great policy change that's happening. That's what I'm hoping.

IK: That's what I'm hoping, too.

BB: But I want to read this quote because and it says, "By not running from the books that pain us, we can allow them to transform us." This is a quote from you. "I ran from antiracist books most of my life. But now I can't stop running after them, scrutinizing myself and my society, and in the process changing both."

IK: That's what we need to be doing. I think many of us have learned, even from your work, we have to be constantly growing. We cannot harden ourselves, and certainly our children into, "They're stupid or we're stupid." We have to say, "You know what, that was not a smart thing that I did or said. That was a racist act. But I am not essentially a racist." No one is. Everyone has the capacity to change, everyone has the capacity to be antiracist. Everyone has the capacity to grow. And if we're not growing as human beings, then what are we? What's distinguishing humans from other beings? It's that capacity for self-awareness and growth.

BB: That's right, meaning making. I always go back to that quote from Shawshank Redemption, "Get busy living or get busy dying." And I think if you're not learning and growing, which can be painful, stretch marks, bruises, you're dying in a way. Okay, Ibram, walk me through, because I really want to get one of your books for my soon to be 15-year-old son, and so tell me about the sequence of Stamped from the Beginning. Is there a YA version?

IK: Yes.

BB: So how does it work?

IK: So when I wrote Stamped from the Beginning, which again, chronicled this history of racist ideas, literally from their origins to the present, so upwards of 600 years of history, people would come up to me and say, "You know what, I wish I would have learned this in middle school, in high school. I didn't understand and know this history." And so, people kept telling me that, "You know what, this book needs to be before every middle schooler and high schooler." And so we decided that, "Let's create one." And Stamped from the Beginning is upwards of 500 pages, and so we decided we needed a specific book. And so I asked Jason Reynolds, who's, he's probably one of the more gifted YA novelists, who historically has written on race and racism, and he has his own voice and his own style. And I asked him a couple of times, he said no a couple of times, but eventually he agreed, and so he took Stamped from the Beginning, and completely rewrote it for young people in their voice, in his patented lyricism. And yeah, they've fallen in love with it. It actually debuted number one New York Times, so yeah, people are really responding to it well.

BB: You know what I love, is it's never too early to talk to our kids about this. And now you've given us the gifts of a board book, a YA book, and then books for adults.

IK: And that's, I want, especially in this moment, when there are a lot of people who want tools for not only understanding racism themselves, but even teaching and instructing their kids, and I'm hoping also that people realize that they should be having these discussions with their children. Their children are not color blind. The data shows that children as early as six months recognize race, and children as early as two to three years old have begun to consume racist ideas. And if you're not teaching those children antiracist ideas, if you're not challenging those racist ideas, and they're only going to grow up and then one day say something, you're going to feel completely embarrassed. Because like with anything else, people have to be taught to be antiracist, just as they're taught, indirectly, by so many things they see and experience and hear, to be racist.

BB: And I think it's been also my experience that, when you don't... The biggest mistake a lot of people I see making, is we don't talk about race, but we've raised nice and kind kids, so we assume that that's going to translate to something, and it translates to nothing, except the messaging that it's scary and not okay to talk about race.

IK: Exactly. Yeah, if the modeling... Can you imagine, there are adults, and many adults who struggle to talk about race and racism, and... But could you imagine if those adults were talking about these issues as early as 2 or 3, or 1, or as soon as you can speak, then... And I think, part of this also, is, as I'm learning on thinking through how to parent my child, of course, we've learned from you, and one of the things we're trying to model for her, is how to have difficult, uncomfortable conversations and how necessary those conversations are for her having a healthy, happy, and productive and impactful sort of life. And so this talking about race and racism is one type of difficult conversation we need to teach her how to have.

BB: Yeah, and, God, I just don't think there's a bigger gift that we... On top of knowing that you're loved and worthy of love and belonging, I don't know if there's a greater gift that we can give our kids, than the ability to lean into difficult conversation and to be vulnerable. Yeah. Okay, I have this last 10 rapid fire, and it's really important, it's more lighthearted, but it's about getting to know you as a person, and I think, sometimes, one of the hardest things about being an activist is not being seen as a person and can be sometimes dehumanizing in its own way. So if you would allow me, I'd love to ask you these 10 questions.

IK: Sure. Yeah. Let's do it.

BB: Okay, ready? Number one's fill in the blank. Vulnerability is?

IK: Courageous.

BB: Number two, you're called to do something brave, but your fear is real and it's stuck right in your throat. What's the first thing you do?

IK: Think about what the right thing to do is, and focus on that, rather than my fear.

BB: What is something that people often get wrong about you?

IK: That I'm very, very serious and angry all the time.

[chuckle]

BB: Okay. What's the last show that you binged and loved?

IK: That we binged, let's see. Probably... Oh, God, what's the show that was the... Probably the lead show on HBO, that just ended. I'm forgetting the name of it.

BB: Game of Thrones?

IK: Game of Thrones, yes.

BB: Okay, got it.

IK: Game of Thrones. So, literally... So, my wife and I, we hadn't seen it at all, any of the episodes, and we just binge-watched it late last year, and we both really liked it, except the ending, of course, but...

BB: Now, that's a binge, that's a hella binge right there, if you watched it all. Okay, a film that you really love?

IK: So I think, one of the films that I really love, particularly in context to our conversation, is After Earth, which was a movie with Will Smith and his son, in which they are sort of lost on this mysterious sort of planet, and he's hurt, and they have to figure out a way to elude people, or I should say beings and beasts that are trying to kill them. And Will is seeking to really get his son, and speak through his son, to get his son to essentially get them both to safety because he's hurt. And I remember at one point, he's trying to encourage him to face this dangerous, or horrible sort of villain beast that sort of makes up the movie, and he says something to the effect that, "Fear is not real. Danger is real, but fear is a choice," and he obviously wanted him to make a different choice.

BB: God, what a quote.

IK: Yeah.

BB: Okay, a concert that you'll never forget.

IK: Probably... So I... One of my favorite groups in the '90s, when I was growing up, was Jagged Edge, this R&B group, and so I was able to not only see them in concert, but even meet them when I was a freshman... Oh, not a freshman, when I was at FAMU, where I did my undergrad in Tallahassee, Florida.

BB: Favorite meal.

IK: So I'd say my favorite food now is probably avocado, and it's fascinating because I only really started eating avocado probably in the last five years, and one day... And I'm the type of person, if it doesn't look good to me, then I'm not going to want to eat it, and so, since it was green, I'm like, how could... It just looks weird. But then one day I tried it, and I haven't looked back since.

BB: The rest is history, avocado history. Okay, what's on your nightstand right now?

IK: Where... Oh.

BB: He's literally looking at it.

IK: Yeah. What the Eyes Don't See.

BB: Okay.

IK: Which is "A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American city," by Mona Hanna-Attisha, which essentially is the story of the Flint water crisis, and how this pediatrician was very critical in not only sort of breaking the problem or demonstrating the problem, but even seeking to lead its recovery.

BB: Okay, a snapshot of an ordinary moment in your life that brings you real joy.

IK: Ordinary moment, is my 4-year-old daughter, I'm home after being somewhere, and she just jumps into a massive sprint, she comes and say hello and hugs me around my legs. That always brings me joy.

BB: Yeah. Last one. What's one thing that you're deeply grateful for right now?

IK: I think I'm deeply grateful for being surrounded by people, who sort of practice love with me, and who show their love as I seek to show my love to them, and so people... I believe people choose to love, and I'm sort of deeply grateful that people have chosen to love me.

BB: Well, your work is life-affirming and life-changing. Professor Ibram Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist. We just have a couple of short weeks to wait for Antiracist Baby, the board book, to come out. I'll make sure that we profile that on all of our channels, and we'll put it up on brenebrown.com. I think danger is real, to go back to your quote, I haven't seen that movie, but that quote's amazing. "Danger is real, but fear is a choice," and I am grateful for you for choosing courage. Thank you for making us braver.

IK: Well, thank you, and of course thank you for all your work, and glad we had a chance to sit down and talk about this.

BB: Me too, thank you.

(music)

Again, I want to thank Ibram Kendi for joining us on Unlocking Us. I'm committed to having him back on the program, if he'll join us, to talk even more, about antiracism and everything he has to teach us. If you want to follow Dr. Kendi, on Twitter, he's Dr. Ibram, @-D-R-I-B-R-A-M, Instagram, @-I-B-R-A-M-X-K. You can also go to our show page, on brenebrown.com, and you'll see all of his books, links to all of his books, and how to find him on social media, his website, and learn more about the work he does. I always sign these podcasts, I sign off on these podcasts by saying, "Stay awkward, brave and kind," and I would add to this one, in addition to awkward, brave and kind, I know we have to make choices, we have to use our voice in service, and for me, that rarely means giving voice to the voiceless, I think the voiceless have voices, and they've been screaming, for centuries. I think our work is to show up, be brave, give ears to the earless, and that's not easy, but right isn't easy, very often. Take good care of yourselves.

© 2020 Brené Brown Education and Research Group, LLC. All rights reserved.

Brown, B. (Host). (2020, June 3). Brené with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist. [Audio podcast episode]. In Unlocking Us with Brené Brown. Cadence13. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/brene-with-ibram-x-kendi-on-how-to-be-an-antiracist/

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Brené with Ibram X. Kendi on How to Be an Antiracist

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Ibram X. Kendi and I talk about racial disparities, policy, and equality, but we really focus on How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi's groundbreaking approach to understanding uprooting racism and inequality in our society and in ourselves.

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Template for Holding Your Employer Accountable for Racial Justice

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Template for Holding Your Employer Accountable for Racial Justice

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Black-Owned Restaurants and Caterers (Source: SF Chronicle) 

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Black-Owned Restaurants and Caterers (Source: SF Chronicle) 

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In June of 2020, a list of Los Angeles-based Black-owned restaurants, created by Angeleno Kat Hong, began to circulate on social media. It was a response to the unrest erupting across the country over police violence and anti-Black racism: amid these large-scale movements for equity, the project pitched a small-scale way to push forward. What better way than with at least one of the three meals we eat a day?

So I picked up the momentum and made a version for the Bay Area - out of a desire to highlight the work of folks who have made massive contributions, not only to Bay Area food culture, but to American food culture as a whole.

We're not the first to have this idea. To spend with intent is one way to support your community directly, says the Bay Area Organization of Black Owned Businesses (BAOBOB), an Oakland-based group that maintains a directory of its own. On top of that work, it functions as a network for Black entrepreneurs and provides free seminars and other resources for its members. "We have to take seriously what it means to build our own," BAOBOB wrote on its Facebook page. "When harnessed, our focused collective buying power is the ultimate clapback. It's our way out of the burning house."

To that end, here is the list I put together, along with some help from BAOBOB, travel educator Tracey Friley and others. As of February 2021, this list has been updated to reflect recent closures and some new additions.

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A searchable list of more than 300 Black-owned restaurants in the Bay Area

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In June of 2020, a list of Los Angeles-based Black-owned restaurants, created by Angeleno Kat Hong, began to circulate on social media. It was a response to the unrest erupting across the country over police violence and anti-Black racism: amid these large-scale movements for equity, the project pitched a small-scale way to push forward.

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UPDATED: A HUGE LIST OF UPCOMING PROTESTS IN THE BAY AREA

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UPDATED: A HUGE LIST OF UPCOMING PROTESTS IN THE BAY AREA

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We are in the middle of something important right now. At this point, cities all across the nation, and the world, are protesting daily against centuries of State violence against people of color. It's incredible to witness and even more thrilling to be part of. This is the time for people to decide which side they're on, and it's inspiring to see so many people join the fight against racism.

And it appears the protests aren't ending anytime soon. My good friend Johnny Funcheap put together this guide to all the up coming protests in the Bay Area. I've posted it below and included some more protests that I've heard about.

Please note that we can't vouch for any of the protests and events listed below. Things are moving at a very rapid rate and new protests keep popping up. In fact some of the info we have is just posters on people's instagram pages. So be judicious and if you show up to something that doesn't feel right, you can always leave. Also make sure you know your rights as a protester.

It's an honor to be struggling beside you right now. Be safe out there.
MONDAY - JUNE 8th TUESDAY - JUNE 9th WEDNESDAY - JUNE 10th
THURSDAY - June 11th
FRIDAY - JUNE 12th
SATURDAY - June 13th

Like this article? Make sure to sign up for our mailing list so you never miss a goddamn thing!

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UPDATED: A Huge List of Upcoming Protests in the Bay Area

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We are in the middle of something important right now. At this point, cities all across the nation, and the world, are protesting daily against centuries of State violence against people of color. It's incredible to witness and even more thrilling to

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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson

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This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

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This Bridge Called My Back, Fourth Edition: Writings by Radical Women of Color by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

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White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by Kevin M Kruse

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White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism by Kevin M Kruse

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So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo 

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So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo 

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The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward 

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The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by Jesmyn Ward 

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Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts 

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Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts 

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White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin Diangelo

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White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism by Robin Diangelo

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Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L Eberhardt 

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Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do by Jennifer L Eberhardt 

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American Lynching by Ashraf H. a. Rushdy

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American Lynching by Ashraf H. a. Rushdy

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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

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Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

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White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson 

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White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson 

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Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi 

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Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi 

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How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

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Email government officials and council members to reallocate police budgets towards education, social services, and dismantling racial inequality via this crowd-sourced tool.

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Email government officials and council members to reallocate egregious police budgets towards education, social services, and dismantling racial inequality via this crowd-sourced tool.

"12" = 🚓

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Email government officials and council members to reallocate egregious police budgets towards education, social services, and dismantling racial inequality via this crowd-sourced tool. "12" = 🚓

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Through community organizing, mobilizing, and education, SURJ moves white people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability.

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Non-Black Latinx Resources on Anti-Blackness

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Non-Black Latinx Resources on Anti-Blackness

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Resources for Talking about Race, Racism and Racialized Violence with Kids

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Resources for Talking about Race, Racism and Racialized Violence with Kids

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Social Justice Parenting  | Traci Baxley | TEDxBrowardCollege

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Sesame Street: How to explain racism to kids

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Sesame Street: How to explain racism to kids

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part 1: entire cnn/sesame street town hall on racism - cnn video

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Part 1: Entire CNN/Sesame Street town hall on racism - CNN Video

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Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms takes questions along with CNN's Van Jones and Erica Hill about how to combat racism.

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Carefully curated list of anti-racism + racial justice minded resources to help all hue-mans in the quest to dismantle racist patriarchy. 

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Carefully curated list of anti-racism + racial justice minded resources to help all hue-mans in the quest to dismantle racist patriarchy. 

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How to Talk to Kids About Race: Books and Resources That Can Help

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How to Talk to Kids About Race: Books and Resources That Can Help

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We live in a time when we are confronted with the complex realities of race, racial identity, and racism every day, but are also advised and often encouraged to avoid discussing it. Even the mere mention of someone's race can be considered "playing the race card" or "racist." We talk about the need to be "colorblind" or the idea that there is "just one race - the human race."

"Most Americans believe in racial and gender equality and reject discrimination in any form. Yet stereotypes embedded in our brains, shaped over time by history and culture, can lead us to view the world through a biased lens and behave contrary to our deeply held egalitarian values," states The Perception Institute, an organization working to "reduce discrimination and other harms linked to race, gender, and other identity differences."

While "I don't see color" may come from a well-meaning place, studies show that it more likely does a great deal of harm. If we look closer, we often find that much of our reluctance to address race directly stems from our tendency to want to avoid discomfort. Yeah, it's hard to talk about why #BlackLivesMatter has become a rallying cry, the legacy of our government's relationship with its Native citizens, or why some individuals are called "illegal" and "alien." Clinical psychologist, author, and professor Beverly Tatum asks us to "Think about these stereotypes, these omissions, these distortions as a kind of environment that surrounds us, like smog in the air. We don't breathe it because we like it. We don't breathe it because we think it's good for us. We breathe it because it's the only air that's available."

This is the world that we inhabit; we talk about needing to talk about race without ever actually talking honestly about race. I believe that it's vital that we help our children (and ourselves) walk and talk in a way that clears that air and breathes new life into these conversations and our world. Sharing stories, real, fictional, our own, and others', is a powerful tool for that purpose. Here are a few resources and books to help us have those hard conversations with the young people in our lives.

Take Stock First
Ask yourself the hard questions first. How do you navigate race? Who are the members of your social and professional circles? Does your family discuss race? What images does your child see? What conversations does she hear from you? Take Harvard University's " Implicit Bias " test to examine your own beliefs.

Take Opportunities
When race comes up, keep the lines of communication open, even if your child says something embarrassing, insensitive, or outright racist. Don't simply condemn and shut down conversation. Ask questions to find out why they're thinking what they're thinking, and how these ideas developed. While we may want to believe that young children don't harbor biases, research has shown that, as Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman point out, " even babies discriminate."

"Young children need caring adults to help them construct a positive sense of self and a respectful understanding of others," points out Teaching for Change, in Teaching Young Children About Race. The Anti-Defamation League has an excellent collection of tips and resources for Engaging Young People in Conversations About Race. This PBS Interview with Beverly Tatum, from the series " Race: The Power of an Illusion," can also provide rich food for family conversation.

Be Authentic and Intentional
Choose books that acknowledge that all of us are "different" in some way. Look for narratives that don't only portray marginalized groups as suffering, in crisis, or being "saved" by outsiders; it's also important to avoid reading only "hero" narratives about "exceptional" individuals. Seek out stories of multidimensional characters living complex lives. I've written here about the importance of cultivating a diverse library.

Picture Books

Middle Grade

by Danette Vigilante

Vigilante's loving and nuanced portrait of life in a housing project - where she explores themes of guilt, forgiveness, and family - shines in this relatable, contemporary middle grade novel. As a companion, this segment from WNYC public radio's "Being 12" series features young people on stereotypes and racism, in their own words.

Young Adult

Melissa Taylor's wonderful Kids Like Me book list includes more titles to share.

"Just as I am a story and you are a story and countries tell stories about themselves, race is a story, too," writes Julius Lester in Let's Talk About Race. If we speak and act with honesty, compassion, and thoughtful action, there's hope for the ending of that story.

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How to Talk to Kids About Race: Books That Can Help

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Sharing stories can be a powerful tool for talking about the complex realities of race, particularly in trying times. Here are a few resources and books to help foster conversation, empathy, and understanding with the young people in your lives.

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How to Diversify Your Child’s Bookshelves

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How to Diversify Your Child’s Bookshelves

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I spent my elementary school years at a different school for each grade. We spent some time in Lagos, Nigeria, and on my first day of school in suburban New York, the teacher asked the class to "welcome" me and said:

"Now, Gbemi, come to the front of the classroom and tell everyone about Africa."

If my not-quite-right clothes and hair didn't make me feel "other," THAT certainly did.

At a children's book fair, a tween wanted to purchase my novel, 8th Grade Superzero. Her mom checked the flap copy. "Jamaican?" she murmured, shaking her head, "That's not for us."

Too often, we "otherize" books and the children we think "should" connect to them. Yet, as Professor Rudine Sims points out, young readers need books to be windows - "...they will see that we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities, because together they are what make us all human."

Here are a few ways to step outside of our reading comfort zones into a world rich in stories.

Make An Effort
Try a formal "Reading Challenge." We Need Diverse Books promotes "literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people." Check out their 2015 Reading Challenge for ideas and inspiration. And even if you or your children are firmly entrenched in a particular genre, there are likely a multitude of stories, storytellers, and perspectives within it.

Make It Normal
Be intentional about diverse gifts and recommendations. Debbie Allen'sDancing in the Wings might help a young dancer soar. Y.S. Lee's The Agency series can hook a historical fiction lover as much as Jane Austen. For readers with songs in their hearts and souls, Tim Federle's Better Nate Than Ever has got it covered. Carole Lindstrom's Girls Dance, Boys Fiddle inspires trailblazers to follow their passions. Judy Blume fan? Meet Veera Hiranandani's The Whole Story of Half a Girl. Atinuke's Anna Hibiscus is a vibrant heroine in the tradition of Ramona or Clementine.

Don't bring diverse titles to the front of the class to "tell everyone about Africa." Find everyday inspiration in award-winning author Grace Lin's " cheat sheet" or bookseller Elizabeth Bluemle's " A World Full of Color " database.

Make Leaps
Seek out lists like " Notable Books for a Global Society," " The Rainbow Book List," and " 50 Multicultural Books Every Child Should Know." Outside in World can launch literary voyages through translated books; Disability in Kidlit, The Brown Bookshelf, and Mamiverse are also wonderful resources for titles featuring underrepresented people and their stories.

Make Connections
I love the If You Liked... series, pairing diverse reads with tried and true favorites. An example: "If You Liked Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, try Two Parrots by Rashin, an award-winning new artist from Iran, who brings Rumi's classic to life."

Make It Social
On Twitter? Follow powerhouse librarians like@CrazyQuilts, @ MrSchuReads, and @AllieJaneBruce who know and love diverse literature for all ages.

Make Books Your Passport
Use literature to enhance travel - bring Tracey Baptiste'sThe Jumbies along on a Caribbean vacation or subway ride through Brooklyn, New York. On runs to The Pickle Guys and the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, I share memories of Sydney Taylor's lighthearted All-Of-A-Kind Family series set in that neighborhood. Explore the Sydney Taylor award winners, stories that "authentically portray the Jewish experience."

While it's generally a good idea to avoid presenting diverse literature only as opportunities for teachable moments, it's also important to steer away from an empty calorie buffet approach. I remember "International Heritage Days" where we brought in foil-covered samples of "cultural" foods, nibbled, and moved on.

It can be uncomfortable, but don't avoid unpacking issues of representation that come up in children's literature. Mitali Perkins's " Straight Talk on Race: Challenging the Stereotypes in Kids' Books" is a great starting point for conversation, as are Debbie Reese's American Indians in Children's Literature and The Pirate Tree blogs. We're all better off if we help our children navigate the challenges of our world rather than pretend they don't exist.

We each have a story. All of our stories are precious. There is a world full of beautiful, complex tales out there - let's go up to the front and enjoy them, together.
Looking for some great stories to share with your child? Check out Kids Like Me: 18 Books with Diverse Main Characters.

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How to Diversify Your Child's Bookshelves | Brightly

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I spent my elementary school years at a different school for each grade. We spent some time in Lagos, Nigeria, and on my first day of school in suburban New York, the teacher asked the class to "welcome" me and said: "Now, Gbemi, come to the front of the classroom and tell everyone about Africa."

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The pandemic seems to be hitting people of color the hardest.

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I dread every time my partner leaves our home. I dread every time Sadiqa marches to the front lines of the war against COVID-19-the emergency department. I dread every time she comes home and removes her personal protective equipment.

Sadiqa is worried like a soldier in a total war, seeing so many medical providers going down, seeing so many patients going down. I am worried about her health-and my own, as someone surviving metastatic cancer. I am worried about all medical providers, all Americans who have compromised immune systems, all Americans who are infected, all Americans who are healthy and want to remain that way.

As a student of health disparities, I am especially worried about the well-being of people of color. And people of color appear to be especially worried about their own well-being. Black people, at 46 percent, and Latinos, at 39 percent, are about twice as likely as white people, at 21 percent, to view the coronavirus as a major threat to their health.
Ibram X. Kendi: We don't know who the coronavirus victims are
Last week, I called for states, counties, and private labs to begin reporting the racial demographics of the people who are being tested for, infected with, hospitalized with, or killed by COVID-19. In the absence of that information, I can't tell for sure whether black and Latino Americans should be more worried than white Americans. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ayanna Pressley recently urged the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to lead the effort to collect and publish such data. Local leaders and editorial boards are pushing for the same.

The pressure is on. The pressure will not relent.

Even so, it could be some time before all or even most of the relevant agencies begin releasing racial data. But public-health officials and medical providers like my wife are fighting COVID-19 now. People are sick now. People are on ventilators now. People are dying now. We need more racial data now. We need to assess the data we have right now.

When I examine the trickle of data from states and counties on coronavirus patients, when I scrutinize the racial demographics of hot spots, when I study the survey data, it sure seems to me as if the viral pandemic is hitting people of color the hardest.

Time and again, a state or county releases racial data. Time and again, those numbers reveal a sizable racial disparity. Time and again, black Americans are overrepresented among the infected and dead. America's newest infection seems to be mating with America's original infection, reproducing not life, but death.
Read: How the pandemic will end
In Michigan, black Americans comprise 14.1 percent of the state population, but an ungodly 40 percent of coronavirus deaths. In Washtenaw County, home to Ann Arbor, 48 percent of residents hospitalized with the coronavirus are black, though black people make up only 11 percent of the county. In Illinois, the infection rate among black Americans is twice their percentage of the state population. In North Carolina's Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, black people comprise 32.9 percent of the residents, but 43.9 of the confirmed coronavirus cases, as of March 30. In Milwaukee, black Americans make up 26 percent of the county, but nearly half of the infections and a maddening 81 percent of deaths as of Friday.

This racial pandemic within the viral pandemic is threatening Sadiqa's entire immediate family. She's more worried about her parents' and brother's health than her own. They seem to be well. But for how long? Just thinking about where her younger brother lives, where her parents live, makes us sick. They, too, are on the front lines of the deadly war.

Sadiqa's younger brother lives in New York City, the site of the highest number of cases and deaths in the country. City officials have yet to supply racial data on testing, cases, hospitalizations, or deaths. But there are some indications that communities of color may be particularly affected.
Fred Milgrim: A New York doctor's warning
On April 1, The New York Times released data on the number of coronavirus cases per 1,000 people for every zip code in NYC. Using Census Reporter, I studied the racial makeup of the zip codes with the highest and lowest coronavirus rates per 1,000 people in NYC. Queens zip code 11370 has the city's highest rate of confirmed infections, with 12 cases per 1,000 people; the neighborhoods it includes are 37 percent Latino, 25 percent white, 22 percent Asian, and 14 percent black. In the adjacent zip code of 11369, which has the city's second-highest rate of confirmed infections with 10 cases per 1,000 people, the population is 64 percent Latino, 15 percent black, 12 percent Asian, and 8 percent white.

New York City is 32.1 percent white, 29.1 percent Latino, 24.3 percent black, and 13.9 percent Asian, according to census data. But averaging out the racial composition of the five New York City zip codes with the highest coronavirus rates shows a significant overrepresentation of Latinos (45.8 percent) and Asians (23.4 percent), and a significant underrepresentation of whites (21.2 percent) and blacks (8 percent) when compared with their citywide populations.

Does this mean Latinos and Asians are being infected with, and dying from, COVID-19 at higher rates than other New Yorkers? We don't know for certain, but it sure seems that way.

A recent Reuters/Ipsos nationwide poll found that 16 percent of Latino Americans surveyed said they were infected, had been in contact with someone who was infected, or knew someone who was infected, compared with just 9 percent of white Americans. It is not a stretch to suppose that, in our highly separated and segregated society, those results reflect different rates of infection in white and Latino communities.

Some of the infected people whom Latino Americans know may be undocumented immigrants. In the United States, an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants were already social distancing from the old virus of xenophobia that Trumpism has been spreading anew. They live in the shadows, mainly in California, Texas, Florida, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois-the very states, save Texas, that have some of the worst known outbreaks. But tracking and arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers have not let up during the pandemic.
John Sandweg: I used to run ICE. We need to release the nonviolent detainees.
The shadows may protect them from the old virus, but the shadows cannot protect them from the new coronavirus. And the convergence of xenophobia and COVID-19 has led to a horrible choice for undocumented immigrants: Do I or don't I come out of the shadows? For my good. For my family's good. For the greater good of the people who forced me into the shadows.

Quitting low-wage jobs could mean getting deported. Getting tested could mean getting deported. Getting treated could mean getting deported. And if they are arrested, they could be thrown into ICE's network of jails and detention centers, where the coronavirus is already spreading.

Undocumented immigrants suffering from these impossible choices are not just Latinos. They are Middle Eastern. They are white. They are black. They are Asian. In New York City, Asians are the poorest immigrant group. The number of Asian Americans living in poverty grew 44 percent from 2000 to 2016, according to the Asian American Federation. Perhaps their growing poverty helps explain the high infection rates in zip codes with large Asian populations in NYC.

Native Americans are being infected in high numbers in urban areas such as Salt Lake City, Seattle, and San Jose. In many rural Native areas, like rural white areas with no confirmed cases, testing could be scarce-but not the disease. The virus has hit Kayenta, Arizona, a small town in the northwest corner of the Navajo Nation, compelling the nation's president, Jonathan Nez, to issue a stay-at-home order.

In the end, though, no group of Americans may be more vulnerable to COVID-19 than the incarcerated and the homeless. About 40 percent of people experiencing homelessness are black, triple their share of the U.S population. Brown and black people comprise 56 percent of the prison population, doubling their combined share of the U.S. adult population.
Conor Friedersdorf: Can't we at least give prisoners soap?
Homeless people may be the most vulnerable in cities like Seattle and Los Angeles. Prisons, jails, and detention centers have already turned into outbreak zones for prisoners, corrections officers, and prison health-care workers. At least 167 inmates and 137 staff members have already tested positive for the coronavirus at New York's Rikers Island prison complex. And it is getting worse by the day.

While Sadiqa's brother is facing an outbreak in New York City, her Baby Boomer parents are facing an outbreak in Albany, Georgia. That means her immediate family members live in the areas with the worst and second-worst coronavirus outbreaks in the United States as of March 26.

Albany, nearly 200 miles south of Atlanta, is the big small town in southwest Georgia's Dougherty County. Nearly three out of four of Albany's 90,000 residents are black. Among Albany's first 24 deaths from COVID-19, 90 percent were black. As of Saturday, Dougherty County had reported 30 coronavirus deaths, an unspeakable death rate of 32.9 per 100,000 people.
Read: How the coronavirus became an American catastrophe
To put Dougherty County's death rate in perspective, it was 67 percent higher than New York City's, and about 2.5 times higher than Detroit's, on Saturday, according to New York Times county data. Albany had two more deaths than Milwaukee County, even though Milwaukee County's population is 10 times greater.

The only two U.S. areas in worse shape than New York City and southwest Georgia are in southeast Louisiana. Orleans Parish, known for the city of New Orleans, is 60.2 percent black. Its staggering infection rate of 892.1 per 100,000 people on Saturday was higher than the infection rates of New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami combined. At 38 deaths per 100,000 people, Orleans Parish's death rate is higher than Albany's. Thirty miles west of New Orleans is St. John the Baptist Parish, where the black population is 57.8 percent. If we exclude counties with only a single death, St. John the Baptist Parish has the second- highest COVID-19 death rate in the nation: an unutterable 39.1 deaths per 100,000 people.

The county with the nation's highest death rate as of Saturday is Montana's Toole County. The overwhelmingly white county of nearly 5,000 people already had three deaths connected to an assisted-living facility. If black people are likely the most vulnerable to the coronavirus in majority black counties, homeless tent cities, and prisons, then white people are likely the most vulnerable in assisted-living facilities and nursing homes. Nearly four out of five people in nursing homes are white, and older people are more at risk of dying from COVID-19.
Read: America's nursing homes are bracing for an outbreak
It seems as if every day now Sadiqa learns about another high-school friend, another parent or uncle or aunt of a close friend who is infected, who is in the hospital, who has died from COVID-19. As of Saturday, Albany had 560 confirmed infections, including Sadiqa's best friend.

Albany is what Sadiqa knows and no longer knows. "My whole community is in shambles," she told me the other day.

Sometimes racial data tell us something we don't know. Other times we need racial data to confirm something we already seem to know.

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latino communities.some of the infected people

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I dread every time my partner leaves our home. I dread every time Sadiqa marches to the front lines of the war against COVID-19-the emergency department. I dread every time she comes home and removes her personal protective equipment.

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ELOQUENT RAGE: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

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ELOQUENT RAGE: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower

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" Brittney Cooper is a national treasure. This book is just so good." -Rebecca Traister

"Rigorous, honest, heartfelt, compassionate, and challenging." -Mychal Denzel Smith

"I was waiting for an author who wouldn't forget, ignore, or erase us black girls as they told their own story and that of the race and the nation. She has come-in Brittney Cooper." -Melissa Harris Perry

"Cooper may be the boldest young feminist writing today." -Michael Eric Dyson

Pre-Order Your Copy Today!

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ELOQUENT RAGE | BRITTNEY COOPER | St. Martin's Publishing Group

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" Brittney Cooper is a national treasure. This book is just so good." -Rebecca Traister "Rigorous, honest, heartfelt, compassionate, and challenging." -Mychal Denzel Smith "I was waiting for an author who wouldn't forget, ignore, or erase us black girls as they told their own story and that of the race and the nation.

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"An eye-opener"-"[ Sister Outsider is] another indication of the depth of analysis that black women writers are contributing to feminist thought." -Barbara Christian, PhD, author of Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers

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Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde: 9781580911863 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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Presenting the essential writings of black lesbian poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider celebrates an influential voice in twentieth-century literature. "[Lorde's] works will...

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Do the work: an anti-racist reading list

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Do the work: an anti-racist reading list

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very black person I know right now is exhausted. They are exhausted by the two pandemics disproportionately hurting and killing black people: Covid-19 and white supremacy. Covid-19 is a new sickness that hopefully we'll soon find a cure for, or at least learn to live with. But white supremacy is a disease as old as time, for which we've been waiting generations to see a cure.

As we mourn and seek justice for the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop and Tony McDade (to name but a few), many black people such as myself are wondering: what will happen when the news cycle is over, the social justice memes are no longer posted, and the declarations for inclusivity, diversity and "doing the work" have died down? What happens when white people, momentarily awoken from the comfortable slumber of white privilege by this moment of unignorable protest, go back to sleep? How do we actually create an anti-racist world and rid ourselves of this sickness and system of white supremacy, when the people who benefit from it are not showing up to do the work?

After all, the disproportionate killing of black people at the hands of the police or civilians did not begin in 2020. When Trayvon Martin's killer went free in 2013, and the Black Lives Matter founders tweeted the hashtag that would reverberate around the world, they were not just calling out the injustice of one case - but rather centuries of injustice of and dehumanisation of black people.

Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter. Photograph: Black Lives Matter

In When They Call You a Terrorist, BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors and asha bandele share a gut-wrenching and powerful memoir of the prejudice and persecution so many black Americans experience at the hands of law enforcement. White people have become so desensitised to seeing black lives snuffed out on their mobile phones that they are often unable to connect the dots to see that each person had loved ones, desires, relationships, quirks and dreams. This memoir draws our attention not only to the statistics and atrocities committed against black Americans, but also to the humanity of those whose lives were taken, and those who, still living, continue to fight for justice for us all.

In her collection of essays and speeches Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde famously wrote: "Revolution is not a one-time event." In order to understand what we are seeing on the news and experiencing in our lives, it's important to understand how history has shaped this moment. Reaching back to books published by black thinkers and feminists decades ago shows us (depressingly) how things are still very much the same, but also (empoweringly) gives us language and context for understanding what we are seeing now - and therefore the ability to disrupt tactics of oppression that still operate today.

Poet and activist Audre Lorde lectures students in 1983 at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. Photograph: Robert Alexander/Getty Images

In order to dismantle white supremacy, we must be able to clearly name it. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo answers some of the most common questions we hear from white people about racism in chapters such as, "Why am I always being told to 'check my privilege'?", "Is police brutality really about race?" and "What are microaggressions?"

People are currently asking themselves what can we do in this moment. How can we show up both in the streets, and in our homes? And how can we do so in a way that is smart, sustainable and effective? Road Map for Revolutionaries by Elisa Camahort Page, Carolyn Gerin and Jamia Wilson is a handbook for people of all ages and backgrounds who are ready to step into advocacy and activism, but don't know where to begin. This beautiful guide covers topics such as staying safe at protests, supporting marginalised communities, online privacy and how to keep up the fight for the long term.

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Do the work: an anti-racist reading list | Layla F Saad

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very black person I know right now is exhausted. They are exhausted by the two pandemics disproportionately hurting and killing black people: Covid-19 and white supremacy. Covid-19 is a new sickness that hopefully we'll soon find a cure for, or at least learn to live with.

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Being able to de-escalate and defuse situations with kids and young adults is an extremely helpful skill. Kids and young adults who become emotionally overwhelmed or irritated in a situation may begin to express their emotions in aggressive or violent ways. Some examples of these behaviors might include aggressive posturing, yelling, throwing items, swearing, and making threats. Quite often, without training, these situations become a power struggle between the young adult and the teacher. These power struggles only make the situation worse, though.

The best way to handle these types of behaviors is to de-escalate the situation as soon as possible. It's very important to recognize that this does not mean letting the student get away with the behavior. Instead, de-escalation focuses on helping the student return their emotions back to a normal level. It is critical that the student is calm for a period of time before behavior and expectations are discussed again.

Kids and young adults with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety, and trauma are just some examples of those who need these strategies utilized to be successful.

If you need further training and support in this area, consider the De-Escalation Strategies Guide that includes extensive training materials, information on Oppositional Defiant Disorder, proactive strategies, reference lists, and a quick-guide to store in a spot for use on the fly.

Also, remember to download the free printable list of over 50 de-escalation strategies. They are ideal to keep on a board by your desk, in the team room, or in a binder to bring to student support meetings. Let me add that they are not only for teachers. Parents, counselors, and administrators could use them, too!
Here are over 50 strategies and phrases you can use when de-escalating a situation:

1. Act calm even if you're not.

2. Say, "Let's talk about this later".

3. Use humor to lighten to mood.

4. Lower your voice.

5. Give a choice.

6. Walk away.

7. Ask, "What would help you right now?"

8. Change the subject to a positive one.

9. Give personal space.

10. Say, "I see where you are coming from."

11. Distract with a positive photo of something they like.

12. Show that you are listening.

13. Remove the audience.

14. Say, "I want to help you."

15. Talk about something they like.

16. Make a joke.

17. Encourage the person.

18. Remind them of something amazing they did.

19. Say, "You can do this."

20. Call another adult for help.

21. Say, "Let's call... I think they can help."

22. Be willing to find a solution.

23. Offer to change the way you are doing something.

24. Re-state what the person is saying.

25. Validate their thoughts.

26. Avoid over-reacting.

27. Use active listening.

28. Offer a solution.

29. Let the person talk without interrupting.

30. Say, "I see your point."

31. Offer to take a walk with the person.

32. Clarify expectations.

33. Remind them of something they love.

34. Apologize for something you did wrong or the way it was taken.

35. Invite them to do a preferred activity.

36. Ask if they can explain more about how they're feeling.

37. Try to understand the person's perspective.

38. Slow yourself down to avoid getting worked up.

39. Say, "So, you're upset because... right?"

40. Don't say "calm down".

41. Show empathy.

42. Encourage the person to use a coping strategy.

43. Don't take items or personal property away from them.

44. Encourage the person to take a walk or get a drink.

45. Give the person an "out" (i.e. letting them go to another room or walking away).

46. Ask, "Would it help if... ?"

47. Keep escape routes open to the door.

48. Coach the person with positive remarks.

49. Acknowledge where you agree with the person.

50. Remind the person, "You're not in trouble".

51. Tell the person, "I'm here for you."

52. Say, "Talk to me," and listen.

53. Tell the person to take a minute to themselves.

54. Ignore the behavior if it's minor.

55. Distract by saying, "Hey, let's go..."

56. Be respectful in your tone.

57. "Do what works" in the moment.

58. Spend time debriefing after the incident to identify ways to improve.

59. Ask them to draw a picture of what happened.

60. Avoid needing to get the last word.

61. Just give wait time.

If you love this topic, read my post on 13 ways to avoid power struggles with kids and young adults!

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Being able to de-escalate and defuse situations with kids and young adults is an extremely helpful skill. Kids and young adults who become emotionally overwhelmed or irritated in a situation may begin to express their emotions in aggressive or violent ways. Some examples of these behaviors might inc

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a virtual healing space for black folx to vent-breathe-move

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a virtual healing space for black folx to vent-breathe-move tickets

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A VIRTUAL HEALING SPACE FOR BLACK FOLX TO VENT-BREATHE-MOVE

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Eventbrite - AIYISHA CASTILLO presents A VIRTUAL HEALING SPACE FOR BLACK FOLX TO VENT-BREATHE-MOVE - Monday, June 8, 2020 - Find event and ticket information.

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Americans don't see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road-they see their fear.

Oakmont beckoned outdoor runners-even novices like me.

We were the second family to move into Oakmont, a new housing development seven miles west of the University of Florida, when I joined the faculty in 2015. My partner and I loved how our living space wrapped around a green-dotted, open-air indoor courtyard like homes we'd seen in West Africa and Latin America. Nothing compared to being outside inside our courtyard home.

Well, maybe being outside in Oakmont-running down its newly paved roads, gazing up at stately oak trees with moss draping down, staring down into the ponds, racing all the galloping or flying animals, all to the sweet melody of quietness. Few houses. No people. Just paved roads. Just nature's sight lines.

At first, I hardly worried about cars while exercising. But the vehicles started coming. Trees were cleared. Foundations laid. New houses framed-a fascinating new picture screening every day for my curiosity.

As I ran on by, I imagined how the framed-out houses were going to look completed. Or I imagined living in the jumbo dwellings. Or as I ran on by, I stared at the construction workers as they stared back at me.

But not on one particular day. That day, no construction workers were around this half-built wonder. No vehicles were in sight. There was just my curiosity on overdrive-pushing me into the house to feed my imagination. I did not need long. I never needed long.

Minutes later, my feet were pounding the pavement under the moss. I am Ahmaud Arbery.

Running from yesterday's acquittal, 2019. Acrylic on cotton canvas. 24" x 24" (Image courtesy of Chase Hall Studio)

On Sunday, February 23, around 1 p.m., Arbery had just peered into a half-built home, as I did so many times in Oakmont. He ran away under the falling moss near the coastal Georgia town of Brunswick. Up the block lived Gregory McMichael, a former police officer and investigator for the local district attorney, and his son, Travis. McMichael did not see a former high-school football standout who normally jogs around the neighborhood, as Arbery's family describes him. McMichael saw a black male "hauling ass" from the scene of a crime, as he told investigators.
Adam Serwer: The coronavirus was an emergency until Trump found out who was dying
Arbery could have been any "black male running down the street," as a 911 caller described him. He could have been anyone's brother, father, son, cousin, boyfriend, husband, co-worker, friend. He could have been me running down the street. As a black male-not to the people who know me or who know Arbery, but to the Americans who don't know me and think they do-I am Ahmaud Arbery. Those Americans think they know me when my curiosity gets the best of me. They think they know me when something has gone missing. They think they know me when they see me running down the road.

They don't see me wearing the same white T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers that they wore the other day. They don't see themselves in me. They certainly don't see their own innocence in me. They see only their own guilt in me-their villainous fear marking me as the villain.

They don't need to figure out who I am. All they see is what I am. A black male. And what I am pronounces who I am. A criminal. The embodiment of danger. The producer of fear.

Black males have been made into the fathers of fear. But the fears of black men are bastards. Broods we never wanted, but can't escape. All these bastards are coming after us, suspecting us continuously, terrorizing us constantly, and we can't escape. The black man can't escape the fear of the black man.

Gregory McMichael "stated he was in his front yard and saw the suspect from the break-ins 'hauling ass'" down the road, according to the police report. McMichael "stated there have been several Break-ins in the neighborhood and further the suspect was caught on surveillance video," the report said. But where is the surveillance video linking Arbery to a recent burglary? And McMichael's neighborhood had gone seven weeks without a reported burglary, a local police lieutenant recently told CNN. The last reported burglary was on January 1, when a 9-mm pistol was stolen from an unlocked truck outside the McMichaels' home.
Ibram X. Kendi: We're still living and dying in the slaveholders' republic
According to McMichael, he ran in his house and grabbed his son, Travis, and both grabbed their weapons. McMichael told police they armed themselves because they "didn't know if the male was armed or not." McMichael also told police he saw Arbery "the other night" stick his hand down his pants, which led him to believe he was armed. Arbery was not armed.

No one living knows what Arbery felt in his final moments. No one living knows what Arbery felt as he approached the white pickup truck parked on the two-lane road, blocking his way. No one living knows what he felt as he saw Gregory McMichael standing in the truck's bed and saw Travis McMichael standing outside the passenger door wielding a shotgun.

All I know is what I would have felt. If I were running under the falling moss, if two armed white men were coming after me in their pickup truck-and a third not far behind-then I would have felt the wrath of terror: racist terror.

And I know the feeling of racist terror. I know what it feels like when a white man- in my case a police officer -suspects me as an armed criminal and pursues me and clutches his gun when I'm just out running (errands). I was three years older than Arbery, who would have turned 26 on Friday. I lived, and Arbery died. Arbery could have lived, and I could have died.

And I could have been placed in a morgue near all those black bodies falling from COVID-19, at rates higher than any other racial group, in states from Georgia to Maine, from Michigan to South Carolina, from Ohio to South Dakota, according to the COVID Racial Data Tracker. We can't see the coronavirus like we can't see the fears that terrorize us, but we keep feeling their lethal effects.

I just don't think Americans fully realize how terrorizing it is to black males when we are falsely suspected as violent criminals. All Americans seem to be thinking about is their fear of us-not our fear of their fear. Black males fear racist fear because we know from experience what happens when the police are called, when the Klan is called, when faces are reddened, when purses or ropes or guns are clutched, when they cross the street away from us, or cross the street toward us clutching their police badges, or their badges of white masculinity.

It is terrifying to produce so much unwanted and unwarranted fear. And then we are harmed. And then we are killed. And then our killers claim self-defense. And then our killers cast us-the unarmed ones, the dead ones-as the aggressors, as Gregory McMichael cast Arbery in the police report, justifying his son pulling the trigger; as George Zimmerman's lawyers cast Trayvon Martin in a strikingly similar case.

If I was chased by armed white men on an afternoon jog, then I would have thought they were trying to lynch me. I might not have run past their pickup truck, especially if they had been pursuing me for some time, especially if one of them was standing outside the car holding a gun. I would have thought he had gotten out of the car to shoot me. I would have feared that if I ran past the car, he'd shoot me in the back. I would have felt the need to disarm him to save my life.

But then again, armed white men have fashioned a racist existence wherein I'm unable to stand my ground against their violence. When white men murder men like me, they call it self-defense. And they are believed. When men like me defend ourselves against violent white men, they call us the aggressors. And they are believed.

Self-defense, like the Second Amendment, like stand-your-ground laws, has been colonized by white men. These rights are not for black women such as Marissa Alexander or Catina Curley, nor for white women such as Francine Hughes or Jennifer Schlecht, who defend themselves against domestic abusers. They are not for Latinos fleeing state-sponsored xenophobia, Native warriors fighting off white invaders, or Asians warding off coronavirus hate. They are not for Muslims or Jews defending themselves against crusading neo-Nazis. The human instinct to defend one's right to life is considered divinely human in white men, and bestial in the rest of us. When I defend myself as a human, I am not seen as human. I am seen as a beast.

Arbery did not just die. His version of the events died with him. His ability to defend his right to live died with him.

But there are black men who have survived the terror of being wrongly suspected. There are black men who know what it feels like to be avoided like we are beasts, or to be "literally hunted" like we are beasts, to use the words of LeBron James. There are black men who know what it feels like to fear the fear.

But there are also black men who know what it feels like to have courage: to acknowledge our fears-and all the fears about us-and still muster the strength to do what's right in the face of this pandemic of fear. We can build a different existence for black men-for all feared peoples-as we all run under the moss draping down for Ahmaud Arbery.

We can build an existence wherein when people don't know us, they recognize that they don't know us. An existence wherein people see our tattoos, hair, flash, lyrics as our art. An existence wherein people see us as unarmed when we are unarmed. An existence wherein people see us as armed for self-defense. An existence wherein when people see us speeding recklessly down the road like Sean Reed, they see us in a mental-health crisis. An existence wherein when people see us wearing masks, they see us protecting ourselves and them from infection. An existence wherein when we are not wearing masks, people give us masks to wear out of care.

What I am-a black male-should not matter. Who I am should matter.

We can build an existence wherein the fearful stop fearing me, and terrorizing me with their fear. Wherein they strive to get to know who I am, to get to know Ahmaud Arbery.

Or they don't. They just wave. They just let him run on by.

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Americans don't see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road-they see their fear.

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American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's true origin.

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack 

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White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack 

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Each winter (in January or February), the Coretta Scott King Book Awards are given to outstanding African American authors and illustrators of books for children and young adults that demonstrate an appreciation of African American culture and universal human values. The committee that selects the awards is part of the American Library Association. The author or illustrator must live in the United States or maintain dual residency/citizenship, and the book must have been published in the preceding year. Check out our list, with the 2022 winners and honor books at the top. And for more excellent picks, try these Award-Winning African American Books.

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Common Sense Media editors help you choose Coretta Scott King Book Award Winners. These award-winning books for kids and young adults show an appreciation of African American culture.

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Your Kids Aren't Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup

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Your Kids Aren't Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup

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Your Kids Aren't Too Young to Talk About Race: Resource Roundup - Pretty Good

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Your kids aren't too young to talk about race. Here are a few resources to get your started.

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https://linktr.ee/blackhealersconnect

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homepage

"One of the most influential books of the last 20 years."
-Chronicle of Higher Education

"Two years after Obama's election, Alexander put the entire criminal justice system on trial, exposing racial discrimination from lawmaking to policing to the denial of voting rights to ex-prisoners. This bestseller struck the spark that would eventually light the fire of Black Lives Matter."
- Ibram X. Kendi, The New York Times

"[ The New Jim Crow] transformed forever the way thinkers and activists view the phenomenon of mass incarceration."
-Slate

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homepage "One of the most influential books of the last 20 years." -Chronicle of Higher Education "Two years after Obama's election, Alexander put the entire criminal justice system on trial, exposing racial discrimination from lawmaking to policing to the denial of voting rights to ex-prisoners.

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

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Summer Stride Collection features books for black children and children of color

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Children's Book

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"Finally! A sassy and heartwarming board book to teach our children the alphabet of humane values. Innosanto Nagara knows that activism begins in the cradle, but to be sustainable, it has to be wide-ranging, deep-rooted, and based ultimately on a sense of fun and community. A is for Activist covers all this ground with a playful rhyming style that makes you want to turn the pages and read the book over and over again.The illustrations are so colorful, beautifully executed, little works of art in and of themselves. What a great book for children of all ages. " -Julia Alvarez, author of A Wedding in Haiti: the Story of a Friendship and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

"Memorable, often humorous poems that teach the alphabet through activist political examples. Never too early to expose your children to justice." -Viet Thanh Nguyen in Vulture.com

"Full of wit, beauty, and fun, we can think of no better way to learn the alphabet." -Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis, author of The Shock Doctrine /filmmaker

"Fun, funny, exquisitely illustrated and brilliantly written with a message that is sure to resonate with kids. May a thousand young activists bloom!" -Medea Benjamin, cofounder of Global Exchange and Code Pink

"I wish this beautiful and inspiring book was around when my daughter was young, but fortunately there were plenty of cool children around today who will devour what Inno is serving up!" -Dan Zanes, Grammy Award-winning artist of Catch that Train!

"The alliteration and rhymes have the rhythm and fun of standard ABC books, burrowing into little ears and prompting memorization and spontaneous recitation." -YES! Magazine

" A is for Activist offers an opportunity for parents to explore their values with their children. At this time in history we need books for children that use words like justice, ally, freedom, and advocate." -Rona Renner, RN, parent educator, and host of Childhood Matters radio show

" A is for Activist speaks to the possibilities of change, of proactive parenting, of creating community, and of celebrating our collective histories. This book is rad!" -Tomas Moniz, writer/editor Rad Dad, a zine on radical parenting

"Reading it is almost like reading Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, but for two-year olds-full of pictures and rhymes and a little cat to find on every page that will delight the curious toddler and parents alike."

Innosanto Nagara is being awarded the "Upstander New Talent Award" for A is for Activist from the 2013 Horace Mann Upstanders Book Awards

http://www.antiochla.edu/2013/02/26/henry-cole-wins-2013-horace-mann-upstanders-book-award/

Watch Innosanto Nagara read A is for Ativist to his son here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1M1HH12e1bE&feature=youtu.be

Get the latest updates about Innosanto Nagara

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A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara: 9781609806934 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

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This bestselling ABC book is written and illustrated for the next generation of progressives: families who want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice,...

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colorlines.com

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Early Childhood Anti-Bias Education Booklists

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Recommended books for young children, teachers, and parents for each chapter of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves as well as additional resources on anti-bias themes and topics.

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From Victoria Alexander:  “I’ve been getting a lot of questions from my non-Black friends about how to be a better ally to Black people.  I suggest unlearning and relearning through literature as...

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Movement Generation Justice and Equality Project

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Movement Generation Justice and Equality Project

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Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project inspires and engages in transformative action towards the liberation and restoration of land, labor, and culture. We are rooted in vibrant social movements led by low-income communities and communities of color committed to a Just Transition away from profit and pollution and towards healthy, resilient and life-affirming local economies.

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Dear Course Correction Participants,

The MG staff sends fierce love and solidarity across the country and the world.

PLEASE NOTE: this week's Course Correction session has been postponed. Sessions will resume on June 16th, and continue to run every 2 weeks after that:

Session #2 - June 16th 3-5pm PT / 5-7pm CT / 6-8pm ET

Session #3 - June 30th 3-5pm PT / 5-7pm CT / 6-8pm ET

Session #4 - July 14th 3-5pm PT / 5-7pm CT / 6-8pm ET

We find ourselves in an unprecedented moment - rebellions across the country, amidst a viral pandemic. We are postponing tomorrow's session to honor the space folks need right now to respond to, process, and grieve the moment - taking care of yourself and loved ones, praying at your altar, showing up for your community, taking to the streets, or organizing with your folks. We know the conversations and learnings from this course are as relevant as ever - and we also know that taking care of each other and showing up for this moment and for Black liberation right now is the priority.

STOLEN LAND, STOLEN LIVES

We stand with Black organizers in Minneapolis, Louisville, Atlanta, Oakland, and the Movement for Black Lives in their demands to #DefundThePolice and #DefendBlackLife. We want to share a few things that are on our hearts right now.

We must #DefundThePolice and end militarism everywhere. Policing in this settler colonial nation grew out of Slave Patrols and then Black Codes during Jim Crow. Police are charged with protecting the extractive system of turning land into private property and hoarding of wealth; not the care and protection of Black people. It's time to end capitalism and white supremacy, and abolish the police state that enforces them. #AbolitionNow #FreeThemAll

Whose land? Whose wealth? We are not concerned for the destruction of property happening in the same blocks and big box stores where capital has been massively infused to gentrify and displace Black, Brown, Native, queer, trans, and poor people over the last decade. That capital was generated off of stolen Native land and stolen Black labor. We call for a return of stolen land and the wealth looted from stolen labor to those it was stolen from. We call for reinvestment of those funds and lands into reparations for Black communities to self-determine. We are committed to a #JustTransition that manifests Black liberated zones, spaces, and land, equipped with the abundance of resources they need to carry out their visions.

Justice for George Floyd. Justice for Breonna Taylor. Justice for Tony McDade. Justice for Ahmaud Arbery. May they rest in peace and power.

1. Follow Black organizations and leadership
Throw down for the Movement 4 Black Lives' Week of Action
Find local Black-led organizations in your cities to support

2. Donate to local bail funds and Black-led organizations

3. Turn up at your altar & allow yourself to feel

4. Connect with your Course Correction study group (or your family, your friends, your loved ones)! We've provided suggested discussion questions below.

We look forward to seeing you on June 16th, to talk about long-term, translocal strategies for just recovery, and how we are responding in this ever-changing moment.

In love and rage,
Movement Generation staff
Abbas, Angela, Carla, Crosby, Deseree, Ellen, Mateo, Michelle, and Tré (and Quinton, on sabbatical)

Discussion Questions:
If you can still meet with your discussion group before the next webinar session, here are some prompts :

1. How are you feeling? What are you noticing in your body, heart, spirit?

2. What is the relationship between policing and private property? What feelings come up for you in talking about this?

3. How is social inequity a form of ecological erosion? Why must we address inequity in order to address the ecological crisis? Does this worry you?

4. How can the demands that Black-led movements are calling for right now advance the feedback loops we need to regain balance of ecological systems?

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Movement Generation | Course Correction Sessions Postponed Until Tues, June 16th

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Dear Course Correction Participants, The MG staff sends fierce love and solidarity across the country and the world. PLEASE NOTE: this week's Course Correction session has been postponed.

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this website contains resources to therapists and hotlines for black african americans struggling with mental health. during this uncertain and challanging time in our black community.

ABOUT THE CREATOR

thank you so much for supporting and visting this account! it means the world to me that this is getting taken seriously, and that the people who need to seek help or care are being able to do so. remember to spready peace, love, and positivity! "WE'LL REST WHEN WE'RE FREE "PLAYLIST ON SPOTIFY :

-vanessa (@golfwung on twitter)

LISTEN TO THE MOVEMENT:
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this website contains resources to therapists and hotlines for black african americans struggling with mental health. during this uncertain and challanging time in our black community. thank you so much for supporting and visting this account!

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Saturday, June 6th

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June 7th at 2pm

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Without the proper context, it is impossible to understand the mushroom cloud of uprisings that are exploding across the country in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others.

To contextualize the anger, frustration and desperation that forced protesters to recreate the lawlessness and chaos that black people experience on a daily basis, The Root has created a timeline of some of the events that led up to black people across the country collectively saying:

"Aight, den."

August 1619: The White Lion, a 160-ton Dutch privateer ship flying a British flag landed at Comfort Point in Virginia loaded with "20. and odd negroes" to be exchanged for food and the "best and easiest rates..."

June 1640: Virginia's General Court created what many are calling the nation's first slave when the court condemned , an African, to a life sentence of servitude because he was black. Punch, one of the original White Lion Africans, had run away from his master along with an indentured Dutch servant and an indentured English servant. When they were found and brought back to their master, a judge ordered the three absconders to be whipped 30 times apiece. The Dutchman and the Englishmen were sentenced to a one-year extension on their indentured servitude contract. But John Punch received a different sentence:

...and that the third being a negro named John Punch shall serve his said master or his assigns for the time of his natural Life here or elsewhere.

1669: Virginia's legislature passes "an act about the casuall killing of slaves." According to the new law, masters who kill their slaves in the act of punishing them are held not to be responsible of murder.

1704: South Carolina creates the first modern-day, public police force. Called "slave patrols," these publicly-funded organizations served three functions: 1) to chase down, apprehend, and return runaway slaves to their owners; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who violated rules.

December, 1791: Congress ratifies the Second Amendment to the Constitution, giving Americans the right to bear arms. James Madison created the amendment to allay fears of armed black uprisings.

[Black Americans had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.

July 9, 1868: US ratifies the Fourteenth amendment, making former enslaved Africans citizens of the United States... kinda.

July 9, 1868 - 1877: Ku Klux Klan and whites organize a national terror campaign that massacres tens of thousands of black people across the country.

The end of federal interference in southern affairs led to widespread disenfranchisement of blacks voters. From the late 1870s onward, southern legislatures passed a series of laws requiring the separation of whites from "persons of color" on public transportation, in schools, parks, restaurants, theaters and other locations. Known as the "Jim Crow laws" (after a popular minstrel act developed in the antebellum years), these segregationist statutes governed life in the South through the middle of the next century, ending only after the hard-won successes of the civil rights movement in the 1960s.

Summer, 1919: Widespread "" break out across the US when black veterans return from World War I with notions of equality. Many of these riots involve police officers and few of the participants of the white lynch mobs were convicted.

March 7, 1965: Alabama State Troopers and the Ku Klux Klan attack 300 nonviolent protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.

July 5, 2016: Baton Rouge, La. officers shoot 37-year-old Alton Sterling as he lays on the ground, restrained by officers. No one is charged with a crime.

Sept. 6, 2018: Officer Amber Guyger enters the home of Botham Jean and shoots him dead. She is convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

February 23, 2020: A vigilante mob in Brunswick, Ga. chases down and shoots 23-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, killing him. Travis and Gregory McMichael have been arrested for his death after more than 2 months of freedom. A third man, William "Roddie" Bryan, has also been charged after filming the crime.

March 13, 2020: Louisville, Ky. police officers Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove entered the apartment of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor to serve a "no-knock warrant" on her boyfriend and shot Taylor dead. No one has been charged with a crime.

May 27, 2020: Minneapolis residents say: "Fuck this."

May 29- present: America says: "Damn right, fuck this:"

Now: America reaps an infinitesimally microscopic fraction of the racist chaos, violence and lawlesness it has sown.

Reap, motherfuckers.

Reap.

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A Timeline of Events That Led to the 2020 'Fed Up'-rising

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Without the proper context, it is impossible to understand the mushroom cloud of uprisings that are exploding across the country in the wake of the deaths of George Floyd, Breanna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others.