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Black Lives Matter

August 18, 2020
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“You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.” ― Fred Hampton

“they ask me to remember
but they want me to remember
their memories
and i keep on remembering
mine.”

– Lucille Clifton

If you have read through my other resource “Decolonial” Reading List, most of it is focused on Indigenous Studies, “Decolonizing” Libraries and Archives (for the most part) because a lot of the work I do professionally is within the non-profit library sector. The two lists can work in tandem with one another but the first list was getting very long.

After many conversations with friends, family, and co-workers I felt the need to create this resource. The following resources are also relevant to the work I do within the library but I wanted to expand upon the other list. I specifically wanted to include materials on Black Liberation, Colorism, Racism,  and white supremacy culture in general. Also, resources for individuals to familiarize themselves with abolishment of the police because the police have always been used as a tool for the social control of minority populations and to protect the power and property of the elite. And many still have a tendency to uphold this extremely problematic, racist, white supremacist institution–including many of my very own community, family and friends.

Also let’s not forget Black Liberation and Indigenous sovereignty go hand in hand. If we want justice in this search for racial equity, then we have to have Black liberation because they are mutually dependent on one another. And in the same way, if Native and Indigenous people don’t have self-determination, if a Black and POC are not striving for Native self-determination then we will never achieve true freedom. Because the foundation of the United states is based off of the subjugation of Black people and the dispossession of Native and Indigenous people from our lands.

There are some individuals that will state “it’s too political” or engage in what I like to call the “what about-isms,” meaning they feel the need to make comparisons when it comes to Black Lives Matter. We will hear statements such as: What about us? We suffer too. Why does it have to be only Black Lives that Matter? etc. This requires a lot of energy to play comparison games. I read something that explains this perfectly: “If we—the oppressed—allow this notion of Oppression Olympics to take away from the fight for equality, we waste valuable energy. By engaging in comparisons, especially in ways that put others down, we are implying that there is only room for one group to be free or that somehow the liberation of one group is more important than the liberation of others. Let me put it another way: Engaging in Oppression Olympics feeds White Supremacy. Systems of oppression and its participants win when we fight against one another. We do the job of oppression for them. But none of us are free until we’re all free.”

I also recommend taking a look at a reading list that puts the call for the abolishment of the police in historical context from Verso: Abolition and Black Struggle.

There is also another very good list created by The Book Table, A Black Lives Matter Reading List, which some of the recommendations below overlap with. I also include a section on resources on these topics in Spanish. And of course, like the previous list, this is a living document that I will keep updating. (Updated: 4/14/2021)

Alternatives to calling police/Defunding the Police
Books & pamphlets
Articles
Online resources
Podcasts & webinars
Police Abolition
Primary source collections
Teaching Resources
White Supremacy Culture
Recursos sobre colorismo y racismo en español / Resources on Colorism & Racism in Spanish
Definitions

#DefundPolice? We mean reducing the size, budgets, and power of all institutions that surveil, police, punish, incarcerate and kill Black people to zero, and investing in and building entirely new community infrastructures that will produce genuine safety and sustainability for our communities.

What is Culture? Culture refers to the knowledge, experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hierarchies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial relations, concepts of the universe, and material objects and possessions acquired by a group of people in the course of generations through individual and group striving. Culture is the knowledge shared by a group of people. Culture is communication, communication is culture. A culture is a way of life of a group of people–the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next. Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another.

What is Cultural Racism? Cultural racism is how the dominant culture is founded upon and then shapes the society’s norms, values, beliefs and standards to validate and advantage white people while oppressing People of Color. Cultural racism is how the dominant culture defines reality to validate and advantage white people while oppressing People of Color. Cultural racism uses cultural differences to overtly and covertly assign value and normality to white people and whiteness in order to rationalize the unequal status and degrading treatment of People and Communities of Color.

What is white supremacy culture? White supremacy culture is the idea (ideology) that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people are superior to People of Color and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions. White supremacy culture is reproduced by all the institutions of our society. In particular the media, the education system, western science (which played a major role in reinforcing the idea of race as a biological truth with the white race as the “ideal” top of the hierarchy), and the Christian church have played central roles in reproducing the idea of white supremacy (i.e. that white is “normal,” “better,” “smarter,” “holy” in contrast to Black and other People and Communities of Color. White supremacy culture is an artificial, historically constructed culture which expresses, justifies and binds together the United States white supremacy system. It is the glue that binds together white-controlled institutions into systems and white-controlled systems into the global white supremacy system.

What is Colorims? Colorism is a practice of discrimination by which those with lighter skin are treated more favorably than those with darker skin. This practice is a product of racism in the United States, in that it upholds the white standards of beauty and benefits white people in the Institutions of oppression (Media, Medical world, etc.) The commonality across cultures is that lighter skin is systematically privileged while darker skin is devalued or disadvantaged. Some people affected by colorism may even develop a dislike for their own skin and features (internalized racism).

Colorism is a persistent problem for BIPOC. Research has linked colorism to smaller incomes, lower marriage rates, longer prison terms and fewer job prospects for darker-skinned people. Colorism is felt in many places all around the world, including Latin America, East and Southeast Asia, the Carribean and Africa–and because the US (historically) is this “melting pot”, colorism is both homegrown and imported. 

 

 

 

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