Anti-Racism ressources (for white people)

[Tine 707]

I had the book "Me and White Supremacy" already bought, but it is a tough piece of work like any form of sincere and honest personal transformation. So I have been tiptoeing around it for months. After the murder of George Floyd, I finally stopped reading bits and pieces and sat down writing my journal and doing the work.

So if you feel shocked, angry, sad, horrified, guilty - any feeling that you can use to fuel action and you ask yourself what you can do now with that energy here are some tips that I compiled for myself. Ultimately you need to educate yourself, and this will be your journey. These are some starting points:

 

Listen, learn, educate yourself:

• Listen to BIPOC voices. Some accounts I follow on Instagram are: , Layla F Saad, Light Watkins, Brandon Kyle Goodman, Lama Rod Owens, No white saviours I also support Aja Barber and Rachel Ricketts on Patreon.
• Work through "Me and White Supremacy" by Layla F Saad. This is a 28-day workbook. Not fast, not easy but truly transformative and necessary.
• Every Tuesday at 2 pm CET we are hosting a workgroup to talk about some chapters in the book and what came up for us.
• Donate. I chose a monthly donation, so it's also an ongoing financial commitment.
• Attend protests - while doing so please also make sure you keep the safety distance and wear a mask. The coronavirus is also still out there.
• In all of those cases first listen and learn, respect the places and spaces. Most of the pressing answers have already been answered and you'll get there with a bit of patience.

That's what I can think of at the moment. 

Listen to the ones who have raised their voices like writers, activists and educators, be grateful for the work they've done to educate us and learn. 

 

As a team here on happiness.com, we talked about the urge to do something and also performative allyship, especially when the actions come from brands. So we decided that only the ones who want to will talk about what they honestly and wholeheartedly engage in. I ask you to do the same when commenting on this topic. Let's concentrate on real change instead of the "would have", "should have", "will" that only creates the illusion of doing something. How are you contributing?

[Lizzie 519]

Thank you for sharing these resources Tine! I think it's great to have a space where we can easily find (and recommend!) material on racism and how to be actively anti-racist. 

Last night I watched 13th on Netflix, which is a really interesting documentary on slavery, racial injustice, and police brutality in the U.S. I learned a lot from watching it, and the documentary has been made available to watch for free even if you don't have a Netflix account. Highly recommended! 

 

[Candy 611]

Here's a list of 10 documentaries to watch about race and racism. I haven't seen any of them personally, but I think it's a good place to start.

I'll also watch the one you recommended @Lizzie 😊

[Lizzie 519]

Thank you @Candy! I've heard of some of these, but not watched any yet - definitely a great place to start. I'll watch one of these tonight! 

[Tine 707]

I want to add MrsKevOnStage and KevOnStage to the above list. I did follow him for a while already. Listen, learn, laugh. Now I follow her too, and I became a Patreon. There's also relationship advice in there. 

One thing I'd like to add is the line between tone policing and liking people. If you start looking, there are plenty of BIPOC voices out there. Listen to the ones you love from areas you are interested in but not only to the topics you are comfortable with presented in ways you are comfortable with. We are here to challenge ourselves, to crack open and learn.

That brings me to something related. Sometimes we need to relax and recover, but that doesn't need to be a reason to let the ball drop. Find an area you are passionate about and ask yourself how white supremacy is at play there and then consciously look beyond. I love reading, and my favourite genre is SciFi. For most of my life, it seemed to me like great SciFi books are written by white men, and I didn't question that for a long time - not as a woman and not as a white person. Until I first consciously looked for female writers and then for black female writers. As I asked in this thread to stick to recommendations you have the first-hand experience with I can recommend N.K. Jemisin and Octavia E. Butler.

[Tine 707]

I found a racism scale online which was useful for me as a white person.

Trigger warning for BIPOC - to showcase the different points on the scale it does include racist statements.

That why I am sharing the link not the scale directly: https://racismscale.weebly.com/

[Lizzie 519]

An amazing TEDx Talk by Mena Fombo who started the the international campaign “No. You Cannot Touch My Hair” that I highly recommend! 

 

 

[Tine 707]

As 13th is not suitable for a 9 year old I was looking for other movies where Ava DuVernay was involved. She's the director/ producer of 13th, Queen Sugar, Selma, When they see us, Middle of Nowhere and more. As a result family movie night yesterday was "A wrinkle in time", which she directed as well and where the main character is a black girl.

[Tine 707]

I recommend Rachel Ricketts. You can find her on Insight Timer for example with "Stepping into spiritual activism" for a first impression, on Instagram and in several podcasts. Like "Red Lips & Eyerolls" or "the balanced blonde". Here's a quote about Covid-19: "Oppressed identities live in really challenging times - all the f***ing time.* or white folx starting their anti-racism journey with her "I am glad you are here AND you are late. This is not a shame-evoking statement but a fact we need to acknowledge when doing the work". She is also on Patreon.

Listening to her was insightful, motivating, empowering and with the directness and clarity that I really appreciate.

She also offers 2 courses on her website "Spiritual activism 101 & 102". (which I haven't taken yet) The first course is for everyone the second has 2 versions:

- "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 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."

[Lizzie 519]

I was also recommended this Netflix special with Dave Chapelle. It's called 8:46 and it's available for free on YouTube if you don't have a Netflix account. I'll include the video here if anyone wants to check it out, I'll be watching it later today too! 

 

[Candy 611]

A friend shared this list recently, and I thought I'd post it here too. It's a bunch of very insightful books, movies, documentaries, and other resources.

I like this quote here : 

We, as allies, should be looking inward to address our own privileges. We should be absorbing resources shared by the BIPOC community and undertaking our own research. Put simply, we should be “doing the work.”

Let's continue to do the work ✊🏿

[Lizzie 519]

Another really interesting TEDx Talk about racism in the U.S. by Brittany Barron, who argues that the problem is the nation's "expertise" in racism.

 

[Candy 611]

I saw this video today and thought it appropriate to share here. 

 

[Candy 611]

3 anti-racism meditations by two friends with different racial backgrounds, now available on Soundcloud. Very nicely done.

[Lizzie 519]

 

I've been meaning to share the YouTube channel called 'Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man' by Emmanuel Acho. He shares short videos where he discuss race in relation to different topics such as relationships, white parents raising black children, religion, etc. In this first episode he is trying to educate and inform about racism, system racism and social injustice. Check it out! 

[Tine 707]

I just finished listening to "How to be an AntiRacist" by Ibram X. Kendi. Such an insightful book. The audiobook is read by himself, which makes it even more tangible. He mixes his journey of becoming more and more antiracist with historical events and broad theories. Hence, as a listener, we get the full bandwidth of a personal story to the theoretical understanding.

"How to Be an Antiracist" is a book for literally everybody because racism left none of us untouched and only by learning more about it we can start to see it for what it is and then decide to think and act differently. This book is intense and honest and powerful, and I am grateful that he looked deep into the pain to make it easier for the readers.

Yet even with his support, the hard part is recognizing the racist thoughts and behaviours in ourselves. Especially realizing that there are so many layers that every time we face the pain and shame guilt of one layer and peel it of there are plenty of others yet undetected.
We quickly tell ourselves that we have done enough, and we are good people, and there are many more who are not even as far as we are.

The scope of this book, the work, this journey is that it will never be enough, and that's tough. Yet every racist idea (around us and within ourselves) we manage to realize, analyze and see for what it is is getting us a step closer to a world of respect, solidarity and support for everyone.

[Tine 707]

On 6/9/2020 at 12:08 PM, Lizzie said:

Last night I watched 13th on Netflix, which is a really interesting documentary on slavery, racial injustice, and police brutality in the U.S.

@Lizzie Thank you for the recommendation. This weekend we finally watched 13th, and it was shocking how the dots connected into such an inhuman and alarmingly adaptable system of oppression. It's hard and necessary to watch even if I am in Europe because understanding the system is the only way to recognize and dismantle it everywhere.

[Tine 707]

I finished Layla F. Saad's book "Me and white supremacy".
It took me quite some time to work through it and that I even had a choice in when to do my anti-racism homework and when not shows my privilege.
Fifty-eight handwritten pages of personal notes, peeling off layer by layer ranging from white fragility and anti-blackness to white silence and apathy. The 28 chapters in the book each look at a different aspect of white supremacy. They invite us to do our work and reflect on our part in all of it. It's hard, frustrating, infuriating, sad and exhausting and it's worth every second because staying in comfortable ignorance is just another form of exploitation and suppression a world worth living in can't tolerate anymore.

 

If you want to talk about racism and also not put the emotional labour of this work on your BIPOC friends I am offering a weekly meeting where we discuss this book and related topics.

[Tine 707]

Not a resource but rather an example of checking oneself:

In a meeting, I just said "chop chop" humorously to my teammates. The moment I said it I felt this tiny pinch, something to easily brush of but instead I googled "Is chop chop racist?". It turns out it's rather classist slightly obnoxious command to hurry up. While I doubt that my teammate understood it that way with the background info I have now it's simply not what I wanted to say or who I want to be. So next time I'll go for something like "Have a happy and productive week!" 

Language matters - educating oneself matters.

[Candy 611]

Here's an essential reading guide for fighting racism:

 

And also, an entire Google doc of resources from Ashely Adams, CEO of Black Yoga Magazine. Her website is a gold mine of education and ways to support anti-racism.

[Lizzie 519]

 

I found this TedTalk by Melanie Funchess on implicit bias really powerful. Lots of takeaways and empowering solutions - highly recommend! 

[Tine 707]

(Alice Hasters - What white people don't want to hear about racism but should know)

 

Here's a book I recently read, and it points towards another critical aspect of educating ourselves. Like all types of fascism tend to be measured against Nazi Germany, a similar thing seems to happen with explicit racism like Apartheid in South Africa or Jim Crow in The USA. Compared to these laws racism didn't exist in Germany and therefore, Germany doesn't have a problem with racism. Or people might find the excuse that "Racism exists, but it only exists somewhere else, and here it's not that bad." Of cause that is wrong. Racism and white supremacy as rooted in colonialism have infected the whole planet, but they are sneaky and white people (including myself) are excellent at finding excuses. That's why this book is so essential for me as a white German person. Here I witness the connection of racism and white supremacy as it appears worldwide and how it manifests in Germany and how an Afrogerman person's lived experience is.
I encourage everyone to expand their research to people's experience in your communities, in your area, in your country. In the fight against racism, it is essential that we see what we (white people) can't see and therefore, we need to listen and educate ourselves.

[Tine 707]

Yes, I read another book about the topic of racism by an afro-german woman: Tupoka Ogette - Exit Racism

I keep learning. While open, blatant racism has never really been a problem to detect the nuances and facets of racial stereotypes and microaggressions, we - as white people - need to learn and practice. They are so "normal" and "harmless" to us (and only us). White toxicity (white supremacy isn't the right word as there's nothing supreme about whiteness) disguises itself so well that nothing will happen without actively educating ourselves and working to dismantle it.

The international woman's day was on the 8th of March. I also want to use this entry as a reminder of the importance of intersectional feminism. White women know oppression by patriarchy and are also benefiting from white privilege. This privilege needs to be used to lift woman up who don't.

[Berta 43]

I have seen the weekly event here on happiness.com to learn from anti-racist ressources like "me and white supremacy". Here's a link to more workshops to deepen and actively engage in anti-racist work as a white person.

Unfortunately I missed out on Dr. Robin DiAngelo's event but her book "White Fragility" is on my reading list.