Date Posted: June 18, 2020
Resources for Reflection about Race
Recent events in our community, our nation, and around the world have many of us asking lots of questions about race and racism and justice. Questions like:
- How do we talk to our children about racism and civil unrest?
- How do we live into our baptismal promises to ‘strive for justice and peace among all people, and to respect the dignity of every human being?’
- What does ‘loving our neighbor as ourselves’ mean for us as a community and as individuals?
- What’s mine to do? How would I go about doing it?
These are important questions, and they don’t have easy, one-time answers. They require ongoing study, reflection, conversation, and prayer.
To help facilitate this work, we’ve compile a list of resources below you might explore. There are resources for all ages, and in many different formats (books, movies, webinars, blogs, podcasts, websites, and more!), and well update it periodically. Check it out! We’d love to hear what resonates for you, what you’d like to explore more, and, also, what additional resources you might add. Contact Cheryl with your suggestions.
For Children and Youth
Storytelling:
They say that the shortest path between two people is a story. Here are a couple of collections of stories related to race, and inspiration to collect our own:
Movies:
- White Like Me by Tim Wise (addresses white privilege)
- Selma (addresses civil rights issues)
- Traces of the Trade (addresses slavery and one family’s role in it)
- Banished (addresses the removal of African Americans from three cities including Cumming, Georgia)
- 13th (addresses mass incarceration’s root system)
- Just Mercy(addresses racism in the criminal justice system)
- Step (a 2017documentary about a group of African American girls from Baltimore on their high school step team. Discusses the death of Freddie Gray, and the girl’s struggles to achieve their goals. Here’s a Build Faith Discussion guide for using this movie to have conversations with children and youth—preview first—Rated PG).
Books for children:
- When God made You by Matthew Paul Turner
- God’s Dream by Desmond Tutu
- If you Plant a Seed, by Kadir Nelson
- Something Happened in Our Town: A child’s story about Racial Injustice by Narianne Celano, PhD, ABPP, Marietta Collins, PhD, and Ann Hazzard, PhD, ABPP Click, Clack, Moo; Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin and Betsy LewinJenifer Gamber, a chaplain at an Episcopal School, shared resources from St. Patrick’s Episcopal Day School in Washington, D.C. Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Anti-Racist Resource List for Students and Families (this list includes recommendations for all ages) was compiled by librarians Jamila Felton and Mara Rosenberg (June 2020) providing specific resources that directly teach or promote anti-racist values and actions or that candidly explore the historical context of systemic racism. A few intersectional, social justice books for children have also been added for their connections to systemic racism.Book List from Here Wee Read: The Ultimate 2018 List of Diverse Books For Children
- Book List from Colours of Us. 37 books to help talk about racism. It includes books for elementary through high school
- This is a great article from Building Faith with suggested books for Teens and Tweens as well as discussion prompts for family conversations. Books and Teaching Tips on Race and Racism
Books for youth:
The Evanston (Illinois) Public Library has offered a great list of books for teens:
For Adults
- Waking Up White and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
- Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy DeGruy
- Black Pain by Terri Williams
- Slavery by Another Name by Douglass Blackmon
- The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone
- Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
- Made for Goodness by Bishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Mpho Tutu
- Between The World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Living Into God’s Dream: Dismantling Racism in America Edited by Catherine Meeks
- White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
- Raising White Kids: Bringing up Children in a Racially Unjust America by Jennifer Harvey
- How to Be Anti-Racist by Ibram X Kendi
- I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, by Austin Channing Brown
- White Fragility: Why it’s so hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo.
- Church Publishing is offering (thru June 30, 2020) Seeing My Skin: A Story of Wrestling with Whiteness by Peter Jarrett Schell via Issu (an online magazine/book format for reading).
- NEW 6/24: The Death of Josseline; Immigration stories from the Arizona Borderlands, by Margaret Regan. Stories about immigration from many different perspectives from those directly affected.
Podcasts:
Videos:
Finding Myself in the Story of Race, Debby Irving TED talk. This talk is by the author of Waking Up White; finding myself in the story of race.
Webinars:
Building Faith offered a webinar, Faith Communities Address Diversity And Racial Justice, in February 2019 that is still helpful today. Learn from this conversation about racial justice and why people of faith should be engaged in working towards an equitable America. Guests James McKim, Liz Miller, and Parker Garrett represent three faith communities addressing diversity and racial injustice. In addition to the webinar there are a number of great resource links.
The Absolem Jones Center for Racial Reconciliation has a series of webinars on Lament in a time of COVID-19 and another on policing (starting this week).
Adult reflection/discussion/curriculum resources:
Episcopal Church’s Becoming Beloved Community and Racial Reconciliation project
Sacred Ground: (Episcopal church 10 part video series) – Sacred Ground is a film- and readings-based dialogue series on race, and faith. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity. Documentary films and readings that focus on Indigenous, Black, Latino, and Asian/Pacific American histories as they intersect with European American histories.
Beloved Community’s Story Sharing campaign
Church Next’s Building Racial Justice Series
GCORR Real Talk – GCORR Real Talk is a series of conversations with community and faith leaders to discuss and uncover the disparities of race, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic status that are deeply embedded in our social fabric. Even as we work to “flatten the curve” during COVID-19, we can work to “close the gaps” between people, particularly with regard to race, financial disparities, access to resources, opportunities, and agency. Created by the General Commission on Religion and Race with in the United Methodist Church.
Vital Conversations 1: Realities of Race and Racism is a video -based series featuring contemporary theologians, sociologists, laity, clergy and other thought-leaders dealing with challenges of race, culture, and oppression in the church and world today. There are multiple series and discussion guides. Created by the General Commission on Religion and Race in the United Methodist Church.