Things to Read.

One of the best things you can do as an ally to any community is to read and learn as much as you can and unlearning the systems of oppression that drastically shape our understanding can some time but there are so many resources available. So I thought I’d share some! These ones are specific to race and racism:

• The Baltimore Syllabus – a Google Doc with tons of articles and a few videos to understand the protests over Freddie Gray’s death and the historical context of both.
• The Ferguson Syllabus – a collection of articles from a group of sociologists called Sociologists for Justice on the killing of Micheal Brown in 2014.
• The Lemonade Syllabus – writer and doctoral student Candice Benbow started the Twitter hashtag of the same name and created a resource compiled of works from black women. The syllabus, as Jessica Marie Johnson states, is a way “to share the works of art, history, and literature that came to mind or informed their reading of the visual album”.
• The Black Panthers Syllabus – because of the recent PBS airing of Stanley Nelson’ss The Back Panthers: Vanguard of a Revolution, several scholars, particularly Dara Vance and Keisha N. Blain, compiled a list of readings about the panthers to further support people’s understanding of the group.
• The Charleston Syllabus – this is a list of readings, books, films, and other forms of media to better understand and talk about the tragic events that happened in Charleston, South Carolina on June 17th, 2015 (when several members of a Bible study were killed by a violent white supremacist).
• The Mizzou Syllabus – another set of readings about the events surrounding the resignation of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe as well as the broader student protest at several colleges around the US.
• The Black Feminism Syllabus by Melissa Harris-Perry – this was created as a response to the reporter Michelle Cottle calling First Lady Michelle Obama a “feminist nightmare”.