Learn

The pandemic has exposed the bitter terms of our racial contract, which deems certain lives of greater value than others.

Slavery gave America a fear of Black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our criminal-justice system.

What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot.

In this breakout book, Ijeoma Oluo explores the complex reality of today's racial landscape--from white privilege and police brutality to systemic discrimination and the Black Lives Matter movement--offering straightforward clarity that readers need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide.

Fruitvale chronicles the final hours of the life of Oscar Grant, the youth who was shot and killed by a BART police officer on Jan. 1, 2009 after he and his friends were pulled off a train at Oakland's Fruitvale Station in connection with an alleged fight.

“My seven year old self learnt to tell people what I thought they wanted to hear. By the age of eight I’d convinced the other kids that my hair was made of sponge… because being Black it couldn’t be made of ‘hair’.”

Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer has everything to do with race.

Claudia Rankine's bold book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media.

Harold was a first generation college student and navigated his path through undergrad with very little help which led him to become passionate about being the person for his students that he didn't have for himself.

Four hundred years after enslaved Africans were first brought to Virginia, most Americans still don’t know the full story of slavery.

A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates Black and white America.

Most of us, says Marlon James, are non-racist. While that leaves us with a clear conscience, he argues, it does nothing to help fight injustice in the world.

Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy–from police brutality to the mass incarceration of African Americans–have made it impossible to ignore the issue of race. To guide us in discussing this difficult subject, Seattle-based writer and activist Ijeoma Oluo steps up with perspectives from her book So You Want to Talk About Race.

For many Americans, it goes without saying that the police are critical in maintaining public safety. Have an emergency? Call the police. But many others — especially black people and poor people — have long countered that the police pose more of a threat to their safety than a boon.

A 28-day journey of how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.

Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth.

Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society, that the election of the first Black president spelled the doom of racism. In fact, racist thought is alive and well in America - more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues in Stamped from the Beginning, if we have any hope of grappling with this stark reality, we must first understand how racist ideas were developed, disseminated, and enshrined in American society.

In this inspiring and powerful talk, Megan Francis traces the root causes of our current racial climate to their core causes, debunking common misconceptions and calling out "fix-all" cures to a complex social problem.

A collection of essays focusing on race/racism, gender/sexism, sexual identity, and social class as these are enacted in a white-supremist, heterosexist, capitalist patriarchy.

White and Angered by the Protests? Let’s Do a Quick Refresh on American History.

After graduating from Harvard, Bryan Stevenson heads to Alabama to defend those wrongly condemned or those not afforded proper representation. One of his first cases is that of Walter McMillian, who is sentenced to die in 1987 for the murder of an 18-year-old girl, despite evidence proving his innocence. In the years that follow, Stevenson encounters racism and legal and political maneuverings as he tirelessly fights for McMillian's life.

Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation's prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans.

The subject of race can be very touchy. As finance executive Mellody Hobson says, it's a "conversational third rail." But, she says, that's exactly why we need to start talking about it. In this engaging, persuasive talk, Hobson makes the case that speaking openly about race — and particularly about diversity in hiring — makes for better businesses and a better society.

Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Douglas A. Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude shortly thereafter. By turns moving, sobering, and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Listen to audio stories from generations affected by the history of lynching in America.

For centuries, Black music, forged in bondage, has been the sound of complete artistic freedom. No wonder everybody is always stealing it.

Americans don’t see me, or Ahmaud Arbery, running down the road—they see their fear.

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable.

“The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it—and then dismantle it,” writes professor Ibram X. Kendi. This is the essence of antiracism: the action that must follow both emotional and intellectual awareness of racism. Explore what an antiracist society might look like, how we can play an active role in building it, and what being an antiracist in your own context might mean.

The Fire This Time is an anthology of 18 writers contributing essays and poetry to three movements entitled "Legacy", "Reckoning" and "Jubilee".

Beverly Daniel Tatum, is a clinical psychologist, professor and President of Spelman College. She is an expert on race relations and author of Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?

The daily realities of life inside prison shared by those living it, and stories from the outside, post-incarceration.

Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery — and are still believed by doctors today.

I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.

This book allows the readers to understand that racism is a practice that is not restricted to ‘bad people.’ Instead, she discusses the defensive moves that white people make when they are racially challenged. White fragility appears in a range of emotions like fear, anger, and guilt. It also appears to include silence and argumentation. These behaviors reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent further meaningful cross-racial dialogue. DiAngelo explores white fragility, how it develops, how it gets triggered, how it protects racial inequality and how we can engage people better.

White Rage tells the story of Reconstruction and Jim Crow in harrowing terms, using specific incidents of white violence against Blacks to personalize the horror. She looks to the northern states as well, showing how white mobs viciously attacked middle-class Black families who tried to buy homes in white neighborhoods.

The film focuses on several topics and subjects relevant to the Black Power Movement including Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War, the Black Panther Party, COINTELPRO, and the War on Drugs. The film documents these events with footage of individuals who were highly important to the movement including but not limited to Angela Davis, Stokely Carmichael, and Huey P. Newton.

We are committing educational malpractice’: Why slavery is mistaught — and worse — in American schools.

Speaking on racism, Morrison said in an interview: "If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees then you have a serious problem. And my feeling is white people have a very, very serious problem".

Coates begins the book with a direct address to his son, Samori. He describes a time when he is speaking on a talk show and is asked to explain what it means to lose his body. Coates reflects on the fact that white American progress has been constructed through the exploitation and oppression of Black people, and that even though Americans “deify” democracy, this is hypocritical because the country has never truly been a democratic nation. When President Lincoln declared that the US would be ruled by a “government of the people,” African Americans were not included in the category of personhood.

Remember when folks used to talk about being "post-racial"? Well, we're definitely not that. We're a multi-racial, multi-generational team of journalists fascinated by the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity and culture, how they play out in our lives and communities, and how all of this is shifting.

Have you ever been the only one who looks like you in a room? Anyssa Bohanan has experienced the feeling on an extreme level, first living as one of the only African Americans in South Korea, and then as one of very few in Central Oregon. Her experiences being an extreme minority both at home and abroad range from amusing to life changing. She hopes that by sharing those experiences she can make the difference for at least one other person feeling the same way.

Examines how the myth of biological concept of race—revived by purportedly cutting–edge science, race-specific drugs, genetic testing, and DNA databases—continues to undermine a just society and promote inequality in a supposedly “post-racial” era.

Each episode we cover a new criminal justice issue. We explain how it works and look at its impact on people, particularly poor people and people of color. We’ll also interview activists, practitioners, experts, journalists, organizers, and others, to learn.

Beyond Prisons is a podcast that explores incarceration from an abolitionist perspective. We amplify the voices of people directly impacted by the system and seek to tell stories that push us to imagine and work toward a world without prisons.

Zirin explores how NBA brawls highlight tensions beyond the arena, how the bold stances taken by sports unions can chart a path for the entire labor movement, and the unexplored political stirrings of a new generation of athletes who are no longer content to just ''play one game at a time.'' It also unearths a history of athletes ranging from Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali to Billie Jean King, who charted a new course through their athletic ability and their outspoken views.

Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true.

The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery.

Based on Douglas A. Blackmon’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book, the film illuminates how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, persisting until the onset of World War II.

It is an interactive project by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a reporter for The New York Times, with contributions by the paper's writers, including essays on the history of different aspects of contemporary American life which the authors believe have "roots in slavery and its aftermath."

What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck while Floyd croaked, “I can’t breathe”?

In 1971 high school football was everything to the people of Alexandria. But when the local school board was forced to integrate an all black school with an all white school, the very foundation of football's great tradition was put to the test.

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of Black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally desegregated the South, discrimination was still rampant in certain areas, making it very difficult for Blacks to register to vote. In 1965, an Alabama city became the battleground in the fight for suffrage.

Our history of racial terror casts a shadow across the U.S. landscape. We must engage it more honestly.

In 1989, a jogger was assaulted and raped in New York's Central Park, and five young people were subsequently charged with the crime. The quintet, labeled the Central Park Five, maintained its innocence and spent years fighting the convictions, hoping to be exonerated.

America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others.

In early 1970s Harlem, daughter and wife-to-be Tish vividly recalls the passion, respect and trust that have connected her and her artist fiancé Alonzo Hunt, who goes by the nickname Fonny. Friends since childhood, the devoted couple dream of a future together, but their plans are derailed when Fonny is arrested for a crime he did not commit.

The New Jim Crow is a stunning account of the rebirth of a caste-like system in the United States, one that has resulted in millions of African Americans locked behind bars and then relegated to a permanent second-class status—denied the very rights supposedly won in the Civil Rights Movement.

In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation.

Intersectionality Matters! is a podcast hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory.

The myth of racial difference created to sustain American slavery persists today. Slavery did not end in 1865, it evolved.