Black Lives Matter Vs. All Lives Matter

Why Black Lives Matter is Crucial, All Lives Matter is Unnecessary, and White Lives Matter is just Racist

Why You Should Stop Saying “All Lives Matter” Explained in 9 Different Ways  – “..a better way to understand Black Lives Matter is by looking at its driving phrase as “black lives matter, too.” So all lives do matter, obviously, but it’s one subset of lives in particular that’s currently undervalued in America.”

Exploring White Privilege

If Anyone Ever Questioned How White Privilege Manifested Itself in America This Is The Perfect Illustration: VIDEO: showing that, though race is a social construction with no scientific basis, governmental policy systematically gave it social and economic significance–all to the benefit of White Americans over the course of centuries.

Glossary – A list of definitions related to racism and white supremacy.

Race Ya. – “I don’t want to be racist. No one actually wants to be a racist…But I have been known to say or do clueless, ignorant, or hurtful things before, because of a subconscious prejudice against people who don’t look like me…”

White America’s scary delusion: Why its sense of black humanity is so skewed – “Until white people are ready to relieve themselves of an all-consuming belief in a colorblind legal system, ready to recognize the violence at the core of the ideology of whiteness (which is, I hope you hear me saying, different from calling all white people violent), ready to adopt a new framework, we can’t talk….”

When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression

White People Explain Why They Feel Oppressed What is whiteness and what is racism? Great article!

What I Said When My White Friend Asked for My Black Opinion on White Privilege

8 Ways the Media Upholds White Privilege and Demonizes People of Color – Great read with lots of practical examples

Racism and White Supremacy

No, I Won’t Stop Saying “White Supremacy” – Helpful article on what white supremacy looks like at all levels.

“That’s Racist Against White People!” A Discussion on Power and Privilege – Important foundational concepts that illustrate the role of power in racism.

The Subtle Linguistics of Polite White Supremacy  -“Polite White Supremacy relies on three key components to ensure its success: comfort, control, and confidentiality…”

Black-On-Black Crime – Breaking down the truth behind intra-racial violence and why you should remove “Black-on-Black crime” from your vocabulary forever.

Open Letter to White People Who Are Obsessed With Black-on-Black Crime

Audio and Video

I Recorded The Racist Things People Said & Did To Me For 2 Weeks

VIDEO: Decoded with Franchesca Ramsey – Short videos from MTV on privilege and racism.  Accessible and often hilarious.

VIDEO: The Myth of Race – how race was socially construction to privilege some groups at the expense of others

Exploring White Privilege (Audio) – “..Not that she denied the existence of structural racism, but she didn’t understand how race applied to her — as a white woman…”

VIDEO: Terror in Charlottesville – Roundtable discussion of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville with leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement

Resources from the 2015 Roundtable: Racism: Resources for Understanding

Our 2015 Roundtable highlighted various resources on racism. The articles are listed below along with the suggested resources in each article.   The entire issue can be downloaded here.

Developing a Racial Identity – James Meinert

• Witnessing Whiteness – Shelly Tochluk
• Waking Up White – Debby Irving
• Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome – Joy DeGruy Lears  Book here, Videos here and here
• The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B Dubois

Racism, Policing and Mass Incarceration – Jenny Truax

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in an Era of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
• Are Prisons Obsolete? – Angela Davis
• Quality Policing Initiative – Organization for Black Struggle
• “What do the protesters want?” – look at thedemands.org
• CAPIC (Coalition to Abolish the Prison Industrial Complex) – St. Louis-based group
• National groups Critical Resistance and The Real Cost of Prisons both have extensive resources on their sites – statistics, personal stories, organizing toolkits and further reading suggestions.

The Movement Will Be Intersectional –  Janae Shepherd

• Black Girl Dangerous – a reader-funded, non-profit blog that seeks to amplify the voices, experiences and expressions of queer and trans people of color.
• The Autobiography of Assata Shakur – Shakur’s autobiography is relevant to the Black Lives Matter Movement because she was framed and jailed for her political beliefs, for working to free all black people. This is an act that we have seen happen over and over again during our current movement – targeted arrests of leaders in an attempt to break us.

Black and White America: Separate and Unequal -Teka Childress 

• The Case for Reparations –  A convincing and clear article in the Atlantic magazine on the centuries of “kleptocracy” and theft by whites from African Americans including the stolen lives and labor taken by slavery and share-cropping practices, lynchings in the Jim Crow south, and segregationist and predatory housing policies. Videos here and here.
• The Making of Ferguson -Public Policies at the Root of its (Ferguson’s) Troubles. “When we blame private prejudice, suburban snobbishness, and black poverty for contemporary segregation, we not only whitewash our own history but avoid considering whether new policies might instead promote an integrated community”. Video here.
• Mapping Decline– a web project with interactive maps of St. Louis that is the companion to Colin Gordon’s book, Mapping Decline, The Fate of the American City.

Centerfold – James Meinert

• The Danger of a Single Story – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
• The Future of Race in America – Michelle Alexander: Great TEDx talk on the corruption of the criminal justice system in America.
• INCITE! –  a national, activist organization of radical feminists of color: “We mobilize to end all forms of violence against women, gender nonconforming, and trans people of color and our communities.” Visit their blog here. 
• “Climbing the White Escalator” – by Betsy Leonard-Wright: – In this widely read article  she compares privilege to an  escalator lifting some up and powered by public policy.
• Life Cycles of Inequity: A Colorlines Series on Black Men – Each month, we will publish a package of content focused on a life stage or event that for black men in the United States is uniquely confined by broad, societal inequities.

Resistance Movements Then & Now: From the Edmund Pettus Bridge to West Florissant Avenue –  Kellie Carter Jackson

Black Liberation Theology – Theo Kayser

• “Black Liberation Theology, in its Founder’s Words” – NPR Interview with James Cone
• The Cross and Lynching Tree – book here and interview here.  “In order to truly comprehend the symbol of the cross in America today we must juxtapose it to the lynching tree.”

Racism and Education –  Terrell Borum

• Savage Inequalities is a must read for anyone who is attempting to gain any level of understanding of the intersection of race and school systems in the US.
• Multiplication is for White People: Raising Expectations for Other People’s Children: “Many reasons have been given for why African American children are not excelling in schools in the United States. One that is seldom spoken aloud, but that is buried within the American psyche, is that black children are innately less capable-that they are somehow inferior.” 
• American Promise & Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and Life American Promise does a pretty good job of helping the viewer to get an accurate account of the journey that two different families go through to raise academically successful Black boys. Book here, videos here and here.

Racism in a So-Called “Post-Racial” Society: Popular Media –  Paulna “Ajala” Valbrun

“Each of these authors.. used their platforms to reinforce the idea of blacks as a marginalized group. This was accomplished by perpetuating negative stereotypes of black women as angry or “less classically beautiful” than lighter skinned people, dismissing the fact that most television shows exclude black actors, and claiming that this was all “accidental.””

• “Wrought in Rhime’s Image,” – Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times
• “Pilots 2015: The Year of Ethnic Castings—About Time or Too Much of Good Thing?” -Nellie Andreeva in The Deadline
• NPR’s Fresh Air – Lena Dunham