Wondering how to talk with your children, students, and/or adult peers about race, racism, and white supremacy? Start here with these resources for children, teens, and adults.
1. Into America with Trymaine Lee Podcast. "Into an American Uprising: TAlking to Kids about Racism. June 4, 2020. This 27-minute interview of Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum gives great word-for-word scripts parents, teacher and mentors can use in discussing race.
You can listen to the podcast HERE or on other podcast platforms such as Stitcher, Spotify, or iTunes. The full transcript is HERE.
2. Diverse BookFinder
(Also on Facebook and Instagram)
People can also request local libraries
to carry children's books featuring BIPOC
(Black Indigenous People of Color).
3. Embrace Race www.EmbraceRace.org :
Many resources and brief “Tip” sheets to help
adults communicate with children about racism.
4. Midnight Teacher: Lilly Ann Granderson and Her Secret School by Janet Halfmann and London Ladd. Educational disparities began during slavery. Teaching Black people to read was illegal in some places and discouraged in others. This book explains the great lengths Black people went through to learn to read. It is a beautifully illustrated children’s book that describes life in bondage.
Check your local library or order from your local bookstore like The Green Toad Bookstore in Oneonta, NY.
5. “Confronting White Nationalism in Schools: A Toolkit.” Western States Center. This was developed by Chicago teacher Nora Flanagan. You can hear her story HERE.
You can download the Toolkit from HERE.
6. The Zinn Education Project. Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States” presents the unsanitized version of American History and leaves no one to wonder why the United States continues to have issues of race and class. This is a great book for high schoolers and adults. The Zinn Education Project website “offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and reading level.” www.zinnedproject.org
7. Teaching Tolerance was founded in 1991 by the Southern Poverty Law Center to “stop the spread of hate.” The website has professional development and classroom resources. They also publish a magazine. https://www.tolerance.org/
8. Dream A World Anew: The African American Experience and the Shaping of America. The National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum in Washington, DC, a pilgrimage for Black people, is a “must-see” if one really wants to learn about the history of Black people in the United States, from the beginning of slavery, through reconstruction and Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement through today. One needs three days to go through this building to see everything. It is a deeply moving experience. If you can’t go, this book beautifully highlights many of the exhibits.
9. Your high-schooler (or you) may notice most Americans (white and Black) know more about European history than African history. Africa’s Great Civilizations with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is a good starting point to learn more. It was aired on PBS and can be bought here: https://shop.pbs.org/africas-great-civilizations-dvd/product/AGRC600 . See if your library has the DVD/Blu-Ray. It documents the beginnings of humanity, kings, queens and generals, the rise of Christianity and Islam, the beginnings of the Atlantic Slave Trade
10. Reconstruction: America After the Civil War with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. This DVD can be bought from PBS.com. For most people in the United States high school provided an incomplete education of American history with regard to Black people. They learned that Black people were enslaved and set free after the Civil War. Rarely would one find people who know what happened during Reconstruction.
The extended trailer of the documentary can be seen here and Part 1 of this 4-part, 4 hour documentary can be seen here. Don’t stop at part one. The entire documentary explains how we arrived at the current point in American history. The DVD can be purchased here. It may be at your local library or you can request that the library carry it.
11. There are three more DVDs published by PBS from Henry Louis Gates, Jr. that chronicles Black people in the United States:
a. The African-Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. https://shop.pbs.org/the-african-americans-many-rivers-to-cross-dvd/product/AARC600
b. Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. https://shop.pbs.org/black-america-since-mlk-and-still-i-rise-dvd/product/ASIR601
c. Against the Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. https://shop.pbs.org/against-the-odds-the-artists-of-the-harlem-renaissance-dvd/product/AGOA601
12. The Negro Motorist Green Book Compendium: Four volumes of the Jim Crow-era travel guide for African Americans covering all four decades during which the series was published, 1938, 1947, 1954 and 1963 by Victor H. Green. You or your children/students may ask, “Why are there no or few Black people in my neighborhood and school?” Perhaps your town was a “sundown” town, or a town in which Black people would be harassed, physically abused or murdered if they were there after sundown. This book was created by Victor H. Green to alert Black travelers to the safe places to travel in the United States. This website https://sundown.tougaloo.edu/sundowntownsshow.php?state=NY list possible sundown towns in New York State along with information about racial animus through conversations with residents. This site was created by Matt Cheney, is maintained by Phil Huckelberry, and is copyrighted by James W. Loewen 1997-2019.
13. The Post-Racial Negro Green Book: Systemic Racism, Police Brutality, Mass Incarceration, Overpolicing, Sentencing Disparity, Racial Profiling, Implicit Bias, White Privilege, and Microaggressions. Published by Brown Bird Books, 2017. This book lists statistics of racist incidents by state and includes a “#Say Their Names Index” some of the Black people murdered in each state.
14. The Massacre of Black Wall Street. Natalie Chang, Clayton Henry and Marcelo Maiolo. This is a digital graphic novel about the destruction of a wealthy town of Black people in the community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma May 31-June 1, 1921. This was the first incidence of the United States dropping bombs on an American city. https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsored/hbo-2019/the-massacre-of-black-wall-street/3217/
15. The Rosewood Massacre. January 1-7. 1923 Rosewood, Florida. This is an early example of how false accusations of white women led to the murder of Black people. The most recent highly publicized one was Amy Cooper in Central Park: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/05/29/amy-cooper-white-woman/ . Before Amy Cooper there was the accuser of Emmitt Till https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/emmett-till-lynching-carolyn-bryant-donham.html. The Rosewood Massacre took place over the course of a week and destroyed an entire community. https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/rosewood-massacre
16. The Case for Reparations. Ta-Nehisi Coates. This article explains how Black Americans were disenfranchised after the Civil War through sharecropping, redlining and restrictive covenants, which left no opportunity to develop wealth to pass on to descendants. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
17. Slave Patrols: An Early Form of American Policing. Chelsea Hansen. Published by the Law Enforcement Museum. https://lawenforcementmuseum.org/2019/07/10/slave-patrols-an-early-form-of-american-policing/ Shows the parallels of the first police force and police brutality of BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color)
Hispanic or Hispanic-American
American Road Trip by Patrick Flores-Scott
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera
Don't Ask Me Where I'm From by Jennifer De Leon
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina
Revolution of Evelyn Serrano by Sonia Manzano
Infinity Son by Adam Silvera
We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez
Mexican White Boy by Matt de la Peña
Black or African-American
American Road Trip by Patrick Flores-Scott
Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older
Never Look Back by Lilliam Rivera
Don't Ask Me Where I'm From by Jennifer De Leon
Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina
Revolution of Evelyn Serrano by Sonia Manzano
Infinity Son by Adam Silvera
We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez
Mexican White Boy by Matt de la Peña
Asian, Asian-American, Pacific Islanders and/or Muslim, Hindu
Darius the Great Is Not Okay by Adib Khorram
Internment by by Samira Ahmed
Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R. Pan
Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman
Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay
The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig
All We Have Left by Wendy Mills
Jewish
Jack Kerouac is Dead to Me by Gae Polisner
Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed
In the Neighborhood of True by Susan Kaplan Carlton
Color Me In by Natasha Díaz
It’s a Whole Spiel by Katherine Locke and Laura Silverman
Your Voice is All I Hear by Leah Scheier
LGBTQ+
I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson
King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The Bridge by Bill Konigsberg
Honestly Ben by Bill Konigsberg
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo
We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
Non-fiction
Stamped: Racism, Anti Racism, and You
by J. Reynolds & I.X. Kendi