Here’s what to read, listen to, and watch to better understand racism against Black people in the US

Combatting racism and injustice against Black people requires both thought and action. To help inform changes in your own life, read, listen to, watch, and discuss the work of scholars, faculty, and students from the Northeastern community.

Read

#HashtagActivism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice

Moya Bailey, Brooke Foucault Welles, and Sarah J. Jackson

This book, currently available free of charge via MIT Press, details how marginalized groups anticipate inaccurate rhetoric and publicize counternarratives through the diverse networks they assemble on social media.
‘Why don’t you get somebody new to do it?’ Race and cultural taxation in the academy

Tiffany D. Joseph and Laura E. Hirshfield

Joseph and Hirshfield criticize the outsized burden placed on non-white faculty, who not only experience racism but are taxed by tasks of representation, such as sitting on multiple committees and “serving as ‘departmental experts’ for their particular ethno-racial group.”
Straight Outta Compton: The Rise of Criminal Justice Educations and The Policing of Urban Communities”

Rod K. Brunson and Richard Wright

In this article, written in the wake of the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, two criminologists inspect their field of study, which originated from a mandate for police officers: “It grew out of an optimistic assumption that providing officers with a criminal justice education somehow would help to improve police-minority relations and that in turn somehow would reduce social unrest.”
The Alchemy of Race and Rights

Patricia J. Williams

In this autobiographical text, Williams inspects the intersection of race, class, and gender. There are no boundaries, she argues, with oppression in one area affecting one’s autonomy in others.
“It’s Not the Spectacle of the Protests That Matters. It’s the Substance.”

Milton Posner and Beza Zenebe

As with critics of Colin Kaepernick’s choice to kneel during the national anthem in response to police violence, people who oppose the logistics of current protests obscure their purpose, write these students: “Once public focus shifts to the method of protest, the substance fades away.”
Laying Claim: African American Cultural Memory and Southern Identity

Patricia G. Davis

Davis unravels the dominant beliefs about the Civil War, reinserting Black voices into the narrative of Southern life and, in doing so, emphasizing the deserved place of Black people in public and cultural memory.
We the Students: Essays That Claim Our Marginalized Histories

foreword by Nicole N. Aljoe

Students of the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science in Roxbury, Massachusetts, retell the dominant narratives of history and bring the voices and stories of oppressed people to the fore.
“‘Kids Do Not So Much Make Trouble, They Are Trouble’: Police-Youth Relations,”

Rod K. Brunson and Kashea Pegram

Brunson and Pegram analyze how when police officers decide which young people to target, monitor, approach, and arrest, they hold and unleash the potential to perpetuate the damaging inequality of the justice system.
Spiritual Citizenship: Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad

N. Fadeke Castor

With almost 20 years of field work in Trinidad, Castor shows how modern religious practices on the island evolved not only in response to white imperialists’ forceful removal of Black people from Africa, but as a means to imagine a world without it.

Listen

What’s New

Margaret Burnham, speaking with Dan Cohen, dean of Northeastern libraries, discusses restorative measures for Black people who were unjustly killed (“Seeking Justice for Hidden Deaths”), and in “Hashtag Activism”, Moya Bailey and Brooke Foucault Welles talk about their book of the same name, exploring how people have rallied collectively online to extend their action beyond the digital world.

Watch

Zoomin’ In On… Rahsaan Hall

Rahsaan Hall, law school graduate and current director of the racial justice program for the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, spoke with Mielle Marquis on June 5 about the parallels between recent and past killings of Black people, as well as what this says about racial inequity and the need for police reform.
#BlackBoyJoy

In response to harmful and false associations of violence and aggression with black men, graduate Brendan DeVoue created a social media campaign in 2018 to celebrate their successes, happiness, and versatility: “Those are things that aren’t usually shown when you’re talking about black men.”

Explore these additional resources, recommended by deans of Northeastern colleges. You can find additional materials in the Northeastern libraries’ diversity guide. This guide will be updated on an ongoing basis with recommendations from students, faculty, and staff.