What Is Racism?
What is Racism?
Often times, when people hear "racism" the image that comes to mind is a black and white photo from the 1960s Civil Rights movement; either of police officers turning fire hoses and dogs on children, the Little Rock Nine walking past crowds of screaming segregationists on their way to attend Central High School, or members of the Ku Klux Klan burning a cross. While these are all absolutely examples of very extreme and overt forms of racism, when we focus on racism as an actively practiced form of violence and hate, we can often miss much more subtle ways that racism operates as a system or network of structures, behaviors, and attitudes in our society.
It is important to understand that racism is distinct from racial bias or prejudice. While anyone can hold biases or prejudices against any group of people, and any group can feel the hurt of this prejudice, bias and prejudice are not necessarily backed up by societal levels of systems that actively make life more difficult.
Racism is both individual and systemic biases and prejudice that are backed by social, political, and economic power. In a society built upon notions of white dominance, for example, white people cannot experience racism and often are socialized not to recognize racism as it continues to operate in subtle, structural forms. The good news is that this knowledge can help us begin to deconstruct the systemic racism in our society if we are willing to put the work in! No one is free from realities of a society built to perpeturate racism, but we can all work together to build an anti-racist society instead!
The materials included on this page can help people of all races and background begin to identify, discuss, and work against the structural racism experienced by Black people, Indigenous people, and other People of Color (BIPOC). They should be viewed as a starting place, but certainly not a final authority on a subject that readers will certainly find is a life long practice of learning and growing as individuals and a community.
Books
Racism Without Racists by Call Number: E184.A1 B597 2018ISBN: 9781442276222Publication Date: 2017Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s acclaimed Racism without Racists documents how, beneath our contemporary conversation about race, there lies a full-blown arsenal of arguments, phrases, and stories that whites use to account for—and ultimately justify—racial inequalities. The fifth edition of this provocative book makes clear that color blind racism is as insidious now as ever. It features new material on our current racial climate, including the Black Lives Matter movement; a significantly revised chapter that examines the Obama presidency, the 2016 election, and Trump’s presidency; and a new chapter addressing what readers can do to confront racism—both personally and on a larger structural level
So You Want to Talk about Race by Call Number: E184.A1 O454 2018ISBN: 9781580056779Publication Date: 2018-01-16A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide.
How to Be an Antiracist by Call Number: E184.A1 K344 2019 McNaughton Coll.ISBN: 9780525509288Publication Date: 2019Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America -- but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an active role in building it.
Killing Rage by Call Number: E185.615.H645 1996 FEENEY COLL.ISBN: 9780805050271Publication Date: 1996bell hooks challenges the way that the focus of masculine identity has emerged as the critics' favoured answer to the crisis of black politics.
Audiobooks
- 'Stamped From the Begining' by, Ibram X. Kendi
Ibram X. Kendi's book is a National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. It is now available to stream for free on Spotify.
eBooks
Talking about Structural Inequalities in Everyday Life by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 9781681233840Publication Date: 2016This book provides a comprehensive focus on systemic, societal, and organizational functioning in a variety of contexts in advancing the interdisciplinary fields of human development, counseling, social work, education, public health, multiculturalism/cultural studies, and organizational consultation.
I Hope I Join the Band by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 0874218772Publication Date: 2012Drawing on scholarship across disciplines ranging from writing and rhetoric studies to critical race theory to philosophy, I Hope I Join the Band examines the limits and the possibilities for performative engagement in antiracist activism. Focusing particularly on the challenges posed by raced-white identity to performativity, and moving between narrative and theoretical engagement, the book names and argues for critical shifts in the understandings and rhetorical practices that attend antiracist activism.
Ruptures: Anti-Colonial and Anti-racist Feminist Theorizing by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 9462094462Publication Date: 2014This book provides tools and theoretical frameworks to make sense of how the world is regulated, governed, controlled with regard to the exclusivity of certain members of the society, and in particular, women from marginalized groups. This book, therefore, engages readers by asking thought-provoking questions to interrogate issues of marginality and oppression in society. The book, as a collective, provides an intellectual discourse on feminism, anticolonial thought and anti-racism.
Beyond the White Negro by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 0252096312Publication Date: 2014Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or'White Negroes,'who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. In Beyond the White Negro, Kimberly Chabot Davis claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover in the past fifteen years. Davis analyzes how white engagement with African American novels, film narratives, and hip-hop can help form anti-racist attitudes that may catalyze social change and racial justice. Though acknowledging past failures to establish cross-racial empathy, she focuses on examples that show avenues for future progress and change.
Seeing Race Again by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 0520972147Publication Date: 2019This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studies, Seeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.
Race and Social Change by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 1119359430Publication Date: 2017Recent events have turned the spotlight on the issue of race in modern America, and the current cultural climate calls out for more research, education, dialogue, and understanding. Race and Social Change: A Quest, A Study, A Call to Action focuses on a provocative social science experiment with the potential to address these needs.
Written/Unwritten by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 1469627728Publication Date: 2016The academy may have a reputation for seeking diversity in its professoriate, but reports from faculty of color around the country make clear that departments and administrators engage in practices that range from unintentional to malignant discrimination. Stories abound of scholars--despite impressive records of publication, superlative teaching evaluations, and exemplary service to their universities--struggling on the tenure track. Written/unwritten reveals that faculty often face two sets of rules when applying for reappointment, tenure, and promotion: those made explicit in handbooks and faculty orientations or determined by union contracts and those that operate beneath the surface.
Good White People by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 9781438451688Publication Date: 2014Shannon Sullivan identifies a constellation of attitudes common among well-meaning white liberals that she sums up as “white middle-class goodness,” an orientation she critiques for being more concerned with establishing anti-racist bona fides than with confronting systematic racism and privilege. Sullivan untangles the complex relationships between class and race in contemporary white identity and outlines four ways this orientation is expressed, each serving to establish one's lack of racism.
Anti-Blackness and Christian Ethics by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 9781626982512Publication Date: 2017Anti-black racism is a central ethical crisis of our time. From police violence to mass incarceration, from environmental racism to micro-aggressions, the moral gravity of anti-black racism is attracting broad attention. How do Christian ideas, practices, and institutions contribute to today's struggle for racial justice? And how do they need to be reimagined in light of the challenges to white supremacy posed by today's movements for racial justice?
A Pedagogy of Anticapitalist Antiracism by Call Number: Online AccessISBN: 9781438463056Publication Date: 2016A Pedagogy of Anticapitalist Antiracism sheds light on the current conditions of public education in the United States. We have created an environment wherein market-based logics of efficiency, lowering costs, and increasing returns have worked to disadvantage those populations most in need of educational opportunities that work to combat poverty. This book traces the history of whiteness in the United States with an explicit emphasis on the ways in which the economic system of capitalism functions to maintain historical practices that function in racist ways.
Pursuing Trayvon Martin by Call Number: Online Access; HM1096 .P87 2013ISBN: 1283847191Publication Date: 2012Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics, featuring a new preface by editors George Yancy and Janine Jones written after the June 2013 trial, examines the societal conditions that fueled the shooting and its ramifications for race relations and violence in America.
Articles
- The American Tradition of Anti-Black VigilantismDarryl Pinckney on the History of Patrols, Body Cams, and More | LitHub
- Respectability Will Not Save UsOn the History of Respectability Politics and their Failure to Keep Black Americans Safe | LitHub
- Walking While BlackGarnette Cadogan on the Realities of Being Black in America | LitHub
- Ibram X. Kendi: How Racism Relies on Arbitrary HierarchiesFrom 15th-Century West Africa to Suburban Long Island | LitHub
- How Do We Change America?Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police. | New Yorker
- The False Promise of Anti-racism BooksTexts that seek to raise the collective American consciousness are rendered futile without concrete systemic changes | The Atlantic
Videos
Resources
- Talking About RaceResources on talking about race from the National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.
- Padlet: Anti-Racism Resources for all agesA helpful collection of resources from around the internet.
- JSTOR: Institutionalized Racism: A SyllabusA collection of resources compiled by the JSTOR database team to help students understand George Floyd’s death in the context of institutionalized racism
- TED: Talks to help you understand racism in AmericaFrom passionate pleas for reform to poetic turns of phrase, these talks take an honest look at everyday realities of Black Americans and illuminate the way forward.
- Muse in Focus: Confronting Structural RacismA selection of temporarily free scholarship from Project MUSE publishers on the history of structural racism in the United States and how the country can realize anti-racist reform.
- PBS: Racism in AmericaPBS's collection of films highlights content that will continue the conversation, add historical context to these issues and enable change.
Collection Development Suggestions
Are you aware of a resource that supports antiracist work or supports Black students or other marginalized groups in the Three Rivers community? Please feel free to submit your recommendations here.