Allies and Links

Great Groups We Love!

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Nonviolent Communication – two groups here and here

Restorative Circles (an exciting conflict-resolution process)

Policy Analysis

Sources for Media

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Local Groups

Catholic Groups

Black Lives Matter

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.

Developing a Racial Identity – James Meinert

Racism, Policing and Mass Incarceration – Jenny Truax

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

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.””