Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Step one: Educate yourself.
We’ve all heard the call to work towards being anti-racist. According to the National League of Cities (NLC), to be anti-racist is to advocate for and creating systems, “policies, practices, and procedures to promote racial equity. Anti-racism generates antiracist thoughts and ideas to justify the racial equity it creates by uplifting the innate humanity and individuality of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.” Being an anti-racist is not exclusive to race alone. It teaches us to care about all humans no matter their gender, sexual orientation, ability status, citizenship, race, or any other aspects of their identities. It teaches us to strive for equal opportunity, access, and rights for everyone.
An important part of being anti-racist is educating yourself on the lived experiences of others who do not share the experiences and identities that you do. Here are some resources that can help you educate yourself. This resource recommends social media accounts to follow, and books, podcasts and videos to watch and listen to. Take the first step towards being an anti-racist today. Additional steps will be listed on subsequent pages (coming soon).
Social Media Recommendations
People |
|
|
|
Organizations |
|
Book Recommendations
Privilege
- Privilege, Power, and Difference, by Allan Johnson. Written in an accessible, conversational style, Johnson examine systems of privilege and difference in our society. He teaches how to see privilege in one’s everyday life and how to use that privilege to fight for the rights of others.” Back of “Privilege, Power, and Difference.”
Sexual and Gender Diversity (LGBTQIA+)
- Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by Joey L. Mogul. “Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences as “suspects,” defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes—from “gleeful gay killers” and “lethal lesbians” to “disease spreaders” and “deceptive gender benders”—to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. Tracing stories from the streets to the bench to behind prison bars, the authors prove that the policing of sex and gender both bolsters and reinforces racial and gender inequalities.” Back of “Queer (In)Justice.”
- Sexual Minorities and Politics: An Introduction by Jackson Pierson. “…Pierceson describes the history of the LGBT rights movement, chronicles the building of political and legal movements and the responses to them, examines philosophical debates within and about the movement, and assesses the current state of the politics and policies concerning sexual minorities. In addition to carefully structured analyses and contextual explanations, the text provides lists of key terms and discussion questions in each chapter to aid student comprehension and fuel classroom debate.” Back of “Sexual Minorities and Politics”.
- Additional book LBTGQIA+ book recommendations can be found here: bookriot.com/books-about-lgbtq-history.
Diverse Abilities (disability history and narrative)
- A Disability History of the United States (REVISIONING HISTORY) by Kimm Nielsen. “The first book to place the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of American history, now updated to include material addressing neurodiversity and the impact of the ADA’s legacy.” ~Amazon
- Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century by Alice Wong. “One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent—but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture…From blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love.” Back of “Disability Visibility”
- Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. “In this collection of essays…Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.” Back of “Care Work.”
Race
- How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America by Moustafa Bayoumi. “An eye-opening look at how young Arab- and Muslim- Americans are forging lives for themselves in a country that often mistakes them for the enemy. Bayoumi takes readers into the lives of seven twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn, home to the largest Arab-American population in the United States. He moves beyond stereotypes and clichés to reveal their often unseen struggles, from being subjected to government surveillance to the indignities of workplace discrimination.” ~Amazon
- An African American and Latinx History of the United States, by Paul Ortiz. An intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights. Drawing on rich narratives and primary source documents, Ortiz links racial segregation in the Southwest and the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century…[this tome] reveals the radically different ways that people of the diaspora have addressed issues still plaguing the United States today, and it offers a way forward in the continued struggle for universal civil rights” ~Amazon
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. “With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that “we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.” By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.” Back Cover of “The New Jim Crow”
- I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown. “In a time when nearly all institutions (schools, churches, universities, businesses) claim to value “diversity” in their mission statements, I’M STILL HERE is a powerful account of how and why our actions so often fall short of our words. Austin writes in breathtaking detail about her journey to self-worth and the pitfalls that kill our attempts at racial justice…” ~austinchanning.com/the-book
- Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum. “Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides.” Back of “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?”
- On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope by DeRay Mckesson. “Mckesson lays down the intellectual, pragmatic, and political framework for a new liberation movement. Continuing a conversation about activism, resistance, and justice that embraces our nation’s complex history, he dissects how deliberate oppression persists, how racial injustice strips our lives of promise, and how technology has added a new dimension to mass action and social change. He argues that our best efforts to combat injustice have been stunted by the belief that racism’s wounds are history, and suggests that intellectual purity has curtailed optimistic realism.” ~Back of “On the Other Side of Freedom.”
- Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. Rodolfo Acuña.“The most comprehensive book on Mexican Americans describing their political ascendancy…Occupied America is the most definitive introduction to Chicano history…With a concise and engaged narrative, and timelines that give students a context for pivotal events in Chicano history, Occupied America illuminates the struggles and decisions that frame Chicano identity today.” ~Amazon
- All the Agents and Saints: Dispatches from the U.S. BorderlandsBy Stephanie Elizondo Griest. “Griest weaves seven years of stories into a meditation on the existential impact of international borderlines by illuminating the spaces in between and the people who live there….Having lost their land through devious treaties, their mother tongues at English-only schools, and their traditional occupations through capitalist ventures, Tejanos and Mohawks alike struggle under the legacy of colonialism. This is a striking read that is sure to be an eye-opener.” ~ com/books-about-latinx-history
- Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad. “Based on the viral Instagram challenge that captivated participants worldwide, Me and White Supremacy takes readers on a 28-day journey, complete with journal prompts, to do the necessary and vital work that can ultimately lead to improving race relations.” ~Amazon
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. “Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration, DiAngelo examines how white fragility develops, how it protects racial inequality, and what we can do to engage more constructively.” Back of “White Fragility”
- White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise. “Using stories from his own life, Tim Wise examines what it really means to be white in a nation created to benefit people who are “white like him.” This inherent racism is not only real, but disproportionately burdens people of color and makes progressive social change less likely to occur. Explaining in clear and convincing language why it is in everyone’s best interest to fight racial inequality, Wise offers ways in which white people can challenge these unjust privileges, resist white supremacy and racism, and ultimately help to ensure the country’s personal and collective well-being.” ~Back of “White Like Me.”
- Wages of Whiteness by David R. Roediger. This book offers “an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States…white working-class racism is underpinned by a complex series of psychological and ideological mechanisms that reinforce racial stereotypes, and thus help to forge the identities of white workers in opposition to Blacks.” Back of Wages of Whiteness.
- Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America’s Heartlandby Jonathan Metzl. “Physician Jonathan M. Metzl’s quest to understand the health implications of “backlash governance” leads him [to conclude and show that these beliefs lead to negative health outcomes for White Americans; specifically,] increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling life expectancies, and rising dropout rates. White Americans, Metzl argues, must reject the racial hierarchies that promise to aid them but in fact lead our nation to demise.” Back of “Dying of Whiteness.”