Click here to read St. Luke’s Vision for Racial Equity

Click here to read St. Luke’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Statement

• Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Blind Spot-Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Baniji and Anthony G. Greenwald
• Gospel of Freedom– Martin Luther King, Jr’s letter from Birmingham Jail and the struggle that changed a nation by Jonathan Rieder
• Nobody Cries When We Die by Patrick Reyes
• Micoraggressions in Everyday Life- Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation by Derald Wing Sue
• Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree by theologian James Cone
• We Can’t Talk About That At Work!- How to talk about Race, Religion, Politics, and other polarizing topics by Mary-Frances Winters
• What If? Short Stories to Spark Diversity Dialogue by Steve L Robbins
• *Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, Brian Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship—and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever.
Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer’s coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice.

Also adapted for Young Adults

• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin DiAngelo

Antiracist educator Robin DiAngelo deftly illuminates the phenomenon of white fragility and “allows us to understand racism as a practice not restricted to ‘bad people’ (Claudia Rankine). 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.

Study Guide Available

• How to Be AntiRacist, Ibram X. Kendi

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At it’s core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilites—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their posionous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.

Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society.

• Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community, Charles Marsh and John M. Perkins

It was not that long ago that African Americans and other minorities were excluded from many spheres of American public life. We have seen remarkable progress in recent decades toward Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of beloved community. But this is not only because of the activism and sacrifice of a certain generation of civil rights leaders. It happened because God was on the move. Historian and theologian Charles Marsh partners with veteran activist John Perkins to chronicle God’s vision for more equitable and just world. They show how the civil rights movement was one important episode in God’s larger movement throughout human history of pursuing justice and beloved community. Perkins reflects on his long ministry and identifies key themes and lessons he has learned, and Marsh highlights the legacy of Perkins’s work in American society. Together they show how abandoned places are being restored, divisions are being reconciled, and what individuals and communities are now doing to welcome peace and justice. The God Movement continues yet today. Come, discover your part in the beloved community. There is unfinished work still to do.

• Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation, Latasha Morrison

With racial tensions as high within the church as outside the church, it is time for Christians to become the leaders in the conversation on racial reconciliation. This power-packed guide helps readers deepen their understanding of historical factors and present realities, equipping them to participate in the ongoing dialogue and to serve as catalysts for righteousness, justice, healing, transformation, and reconciliation.

Website             Discussion Guide             Tips for White Bridge Builders

• Fearless Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice, Gregory C. Ellison II

Drawing on all the community’s collective voices—from “doctors to drug dealers”—Fearless Dialogues is a groundbreaking program that seeks real solutions to problems of chronic unemployment, violence, and hopelessness. In cities around the United States and now the world, the program’s founder, Gregory C. Ellison, and his team create conversations among community members who have never spoken to one another, the goal of which are real, implementable, and lasting changes to the life of the community.

These community transformations are based on both face-to-face encounters and substantive analysis of the problems the community faces. In Fearless Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice, Ellison makes this same kind of analysis available to readers, walking them through the steps that must be taken to find common ground in our divided communities and then to implement genuine and lasting change.

Website

• I am Not Your Negro, James Baldwin

To compose his stunning documentary film I Am Not Your Negro, acclaimed filmmaker Raoul Peck mined James Baldwin’s published and unpublished oeuvre, selecting passages from his books, essays, letters, notes, and interviews that are every bit as incisive and pertinent now as they have ever been. Weaving these texts together, Peck brilliantly imagines the book that Baldwin never wrote. In his final years, Baldwin had envisioned a book about his three assassinated friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. His deeply personal notes for the project have never been published before. Peck’s film uses them to jump through time, juxtaposing Baldwin’s private words with his public statements, in a blazing examination of the tragic history of race in America.

• Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win, John M. Perkins

According to recent surveys and studies, race relations in the United States are the worst they’ve been since the 1990s, and many would argue that life for most minorities has not significantly improved since the civil rights era of the 1960s. For so many, the dream of true equality has dissolved into a reality of prejudice, fear, and violence as a way of life.

John M. Perkins has been there from the beginning. Raised by his sharecropping grandparents, Perkins fled Mississippi in 1947 after his brother was fatally shot by a police officer. He led voter registration efforts in 1964, worked for school desegregation in 1967, and was imprisoned and tortured in 1970. Through it all, he has remained determined to seek justice and reconciliation based in Christ’s redemptive work.

“Justice is something that every generation has to strive for,” he says. And despite the setbacks of recent years, Perkins finds hope in the young people he has met all across the nation who are hard at work, bringing about reconciliation in God’s name and offering acceptance to all. Dream with Me is his look back at a life devoted to seeking justice for all God’s people, as well as a look forward to what he sees as a potentially historic breakthrough for people of every race.

• Black & White: Disrupting Racism One Friendship at a Time, Teesha Hadra and John Hambrick

Working against racism is part of what it means to call Jesus Lord and Savior. Most of us don’t need to make speeches. We need to make friends. This is the core message of Black and White: racism can be disrupted by relationships. If you will risk forging friendships with those who do not look like you, it will change the way you see the world, and that could change the world.

The authors, Teesha Hadra, a young black woman, and John Hambrick, a sixty-year-old white man, bring a confident and redemptive tone to this hope because that is exactly what they’ve experienced.  Black and White leverages their story, surrounding it with other’s stories, practical advice, and exploration of the systems of racism to motivate you to consider your own role in change.

– Learn about the various and often subtle ways racism continues to be a part of American culture.

– Discover how simple (albeit not always easy) it is to get involved in what God is doing to disrupt racism.

– Become equipped to take faithful, practical, next steps in obedience to God’s call to join the movement against racism.

• I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World for Whiteness, Austin Channing Brown

Austin Channing Brown’s first encounter with a racialized America came at age 7, when she discovered her parents named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. Growing up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, Austin writes, “I had to learn what it means to love blackness,” a journey that led to a lifetime spent navigating America’s racial divide as a writer, speaker and expert who helps organizations practice genuine inclusion.

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, in stories that bear witness to the complexity of America’s social fabric–from Black Cleveland neighborhoods to private schools in the middle-class suburbs, from prison walls to the boardrooms at majority-white organizations.

For readers who have engaged with America’s legacy on race through the writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Michael Eric Dyson, I’m Still Here is an illuminating look at how white, middle-class, Evangelicalism has participated in an era of rising racial hostility, inviting the reader to confront apathy, recognize God’s ongoing work in the world, and discover how blackness–if we let it–can save us all.

Study Guides and Videos               Manifesto

• White Awake: An Honest Look at What it Means to be White, Daniel Hill

Daniel Hill will never forget the day he heard these words: “Daniel, you may be white, but don’t let that lull you into thinking you have no culture. White culture is very real. In fact, when white culture comes in contact with other cultures, it almost always wins. So it would be a really good idea for you to learn about your culture.” Confused and unsettled by this encounter, Hill began a journey of understanding his own white identity. Today he is an active participant in addressing and confronting racial and systemic injustices. And in this compelling and timely book, he shows you the seven stages to expect on your own path to cultural awakening. It’s crucial to understand both personal and social realities in the areas of race, culture, and identity. This book will give you a new perspective on being white and also empower you to be an agent of reconciliation in our increasingly diverse and divided world.

• The Myth of Equality: Uncovering the Roots of Injustice and Privilege, Ken Wytsma

Is privilege real or imagined? It’s clear that issues of race and equality have come to the forefront in our nation’s consciousness. Every week yet another incident involving racial tension splashes across headlines and dominates our news feeds. But it’s not easy to unpack the origins of these tensions, and perhaps we wonder whether any of these issues really has anything to do with us. Ken Wytsma, founder of the Justice Conference, understands these questions. He has gone through his own journey of understanding the underpinnings of inequality and privilege. In this timely, insightful book Wytsma unpacks what we need to know to be grounded in conversations about today’s race-related issues. And he helps us come to a deeper understanding of both the origins of these issues and the reconciling role we are called to play as witnesses of the gospel. Inequality and privilege are real. The Myth of Equality opens our eyes to realities we may have never realized were present in our society and world. And we will be changed for the better as a result.

• Dialogues: On Race
  • Episode 1: What Does it Mean to be White?
    • History and the social construct of race
  • Episode 2: Christmas Cookies from Cambodia
    • The Bible and race in America
  • Episode 3: I’m Black and I’m Proud
    • Anti-blackness, oppression, and the dehumanization of black bodies
  • Episode 4: American Amnesia
    • Christianity and the erasing of the Native American stories
  • Episode 5: Whither the Women?
    • Race, gender, and the intersecting nature of oppression
  • Episode 6: Two Christianities
    • American religion in black and white
  • Episode 7: A New Heaven and a New Earth
    • The problem with racial reconciliation

• Under Our Skin: Getting Real about Race. Getting Free from the Fears and Frustrations that Divide Us, Benjamin Watson

Can it ever get better? This is the question Benjamin Watson is asking. In a country aflame with the fallout from the racial divide–in which Ferguson, Charleston, and the Confederate flag dominate the national news, daily seeming to rip the wounds open ever wider–is there hope for honest and healing conversation? For finally coming to understand each other on issues that are ultimately about so much more than black and white?An NFL tight end for the New Orleans Saints and a widely read and followed commentator on social media, Watson has taken the Internet by storm with his remarkable insights about some of the most sensitive and charged topics of our day. Now, in “Under Our Skin, ” Watson draws from his own life, his family legacy, and his role as a husband and father to sensitively and honestly examine both sides of the race debate and appeal to the power and possibility of faith as a step toward healing.

• On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, Deray McKesson

On August 2014, twenty-nine-year-old activist DeRay Mckesson stood with hundreds of others on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to push a message of justice and accountability. These protests, and others like them in cities across the country, resulted in the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, in his first book, 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. The book offers a new framework and language for understanding the nature of oppression. With it, we can begin charting a course to dismantle the obvious and subtle structures that limit freedom.

Honest, courageous, and imaginative, On the Other Side of Freedom is a work brimming with hope. Drawing from his own experiences as an activist, organizer, educator, and public official, Mckesson exhorts all Americans to work to dismantle the legacy of racism and to imagine the best of what is possible. Honoring the voices of a new generation of activists, On the Other Side of Freedom is a visionary’s call to take responsibility for imagining, and then building, the world we want to live in.

• Who Will Be a Witness: Igniting Activism for God’s Justice, Love, and Deliverance, Drew G. I. Hart

Churches have begun awakening to social and political injustices, often carried out in the name of Christianity. But once awakened, how will we respond? Who Will Be a Witness offers a vision for communities of faith to organize for deliverance and justice in their neighborhoods, states, and nation as an essential part of living out the call of Jesus.

Author Drew G. I. Hart provides incisive insights into Scripture and history, along with illuminating personal stories, to help us identify how the witness of the church has become mangled by Christendom, white supremacy, and religious nationalism. Hart provides a wide range of options for congregations seeking to give witness to Jesus’ ethic of love for and solidarity with the vulnerable.

At a time when many feel disillusioned and distressed, Hart calls the church to action, offering a way forward that is deeply rooted in the life and witness of Jesus. Dr. Hart’s testimony is powerful, personal, and profound, serving as a compass that points the church to the future and offers us a path toward meaningful social change and a more faithful witness to the way of Jesus.

• The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustive in America’s Law Enforcement, Matthew Horace

During his 28-year career, Matthew Horace rose through the ranks from a police officer working the beat to a federal agent working criminal cases in some of the toughest communities in America to a highly decorated federal law enforcement executive managing high-profile investigations nationwide. Yet it was not until seven years into his service- when Horace found himself face down on the ground with a gun pointed at his head by a white fellow officer-that he fully understood the racism seething within America’s police departments.

Through gut-wrenching reportage, on-the-ground research, and personal accounts from interviews with police and government officials around the country, Horace presents an insider’s examination of archaic police tactics. He dissects some of the nation’s most highly publicized police shootings and communities to explain how these systems and tactics have hurt the people they serve, revealing the mistakes that have stoked racist policing, sky-high incarceration rates, and an epidemic of violence.

 

• The Unspoken Privilege of Being White

Monday, June 8, 2020

Contemplation and Racism, Week Twenty-three

Richard Rohrs Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation

Adapted from “Richard Rohr on White Privilege,” interview with Reverend Romal J. Tune (January 19, 2016).

• Center for Action and Contemplation
• Sojourners-Magazine

Where Christians turn for a faithful perspective on news and culture

1-800-678-9691

• Addressing Microaggressions and Macroaggressions in Diverse Contexts

NYS Psychologist, Special issue of the NYSPA Notebook

The Official Journal of the New York State Psychological Association, Fall 2017, Vos XXIX/No. 3

This article and access to academic papers on related topics can be found at

www.Academia.edu

• Why I, as a black man, attend KKK rallies

Daryl Davis | TEDxNaperville

• Sometimes You’re A Caterpillar

Animation for kids and adults to understand privilege

• 5 tips for being an Ally
• Students Learn a Powerful Lesson About Privilege
• Systemic Racism Explained (And addresses Implicit Bias)
• #HatchKids Discuss Microaggressions

(Kids saying common comments that hit hard)

• The Many Problems with You Sound White
• The Unequal Opportunity Race
• “Because I’m Latino, I can’t have money?” Kids on Race
• Brene Brown on Empathy

Empathy (Feeling with people) vs. Sympathy

How we try to make something better in a difficult situation-vs. connection

• 13^th (Netflix)

13th is a 2016 American documentary by director Ava DuVernay. The film explores the “intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States;” it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime.

DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the American Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weigh more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration of people of color in the United States. She examines the prison-industrial complex and the emerging detention-industrial complex, discussing how much money is being made by corporations from such incarcerations.

• When They See Us                                   (Netflix)

When They See Us is a 2019 American drama web television miniseries created, co-written, and directed by Ava DuVernay for Netflix, that premiered in four parts on May 31, 2019. It is based on events of the 1989 Central Park jogger case and explores the lives and families of the five male suspects who were falsely accused then prosecuted on charges related to the rape and assault of a woman in Central Park, New York City.

A companion special, titled Oprah Winfrey Presents When They See Us Now, in which the cast, the creator, and the exonerated five are interviewed, premiered on June 12, 2019, on Netflix and the Oprah Winfrey Network.^[2]

• Race: The Power of an Illusion                    (PBS)

Race: The Power of an Illusion is a three-part documentary series produced by California Newsreel that investigates the idea of race in society, science and history. The educational documentary originally screened on American public television and was primarily funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation and PBS.

The division of people into distinct categories—”white”, “black”, “yellow”, “red”—has become so widely accepted and so deeply rooted that most people do not think to question its veracity. This three-hour documentary challenges the idea of race as biology and traces our current notions to the 19th century. It also demonstrates how race nevertheless has a continuing impact through institutions and social policies.

Chapter One – The Difference Between Us

Examines the contemporary science – including genetics – that challenges our common-sense assumptions that human beings can be bundled into three or four fundamentally different groups according to their physical traits.

Chapter Two – The Story We Tell

Uncovers the roots of the race concept in North America, the 19th-century science that legitimated it, and how it came to be held so fiercely in the Western imagination. The episode is an eye-opening tale of how race served to rationalize, even justify, American social inequalities as “natural.”

Chapter Three – The House We Live In

Asks, if race is not biology, what is it? This episode uncovers how race resides not in nature but in politics, economics and culture. It reveals how our social institutions “make” race by disproportionately channeling resources, power, status and wealth to white people.

• Selma

Selma is a 2014 historical drama film directed by Ava DuVernay and written by Paul Webb. It is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches led by James Bevel,[5][6] Hosea Williams, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lewis.

• Time: The Kalief Browder Story                   (Netflix)

Time: The Kalief Browder Story is a six-episode American documentary television miniseries that broadcast on Spike beginning March 1, 2017.[3] The documentary recounts the story of Kalief Browder, a Bronx high school student who was imprisoned for three years, two of them in solitary confinement on Rikers Island, without being convicted of a crime. He was accused at 16 of stealing a backpack, and his family was unable to afford his bail, set at $900.

Episode 1 – The System

Episode 2 – The Island

Episode 3 – The Bing

Episode 4 – The Witness

Episode 5 – Injustice for All

Episode 6 – The After Life

• Just Mercy                                             (Amazon, YouTube)

Just Mercy is a 2019 American legal drama film directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, and starring Michael B. Jordan, Jamie Foxx, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, Karan Kendrick and Brie Larson. It tells the true story of Walter McMillian, who, with the help of young defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, appeals his murder conviction. The film is based on the memoir of the same name, written by Stevenson.

• I Am Not Your Negro                                (Amazon, YouTube)

I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 documentary film directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin’s unfinished manuscript Remember This House. Narrated by actor Samuel L. Jackson, the film explores the history of racism in the United States through Baldwin’s reminiscences of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his personal observations of American history.

• 3 ½ Minutes. Ten Bullets.                          (HBO, Amazon, YouTube)

3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, also known as 3 1/2 Minutes, is a 2015 documentary film written and directed by Marc Silver. The film is based on the events surrounding the 2012 shooting of Jordan Russell Davis and examines the incident itself, as well as the subsequent trial, media coverage and protests that resulted from the shooting.

• The House I Live In                                  (Tubi, Amazon, PBS)

For the past 40 years, the war on drugs has resulted in more than 45 million arrests, $1 trillion dollars in government spending, and America’s role as the world’s largest jailer. Yet for all that, drugs are cheaper, purer, and more available than ever. Filmed in more than twenty states, The House I Live In captures heart-wrenching stories of those on the front lines — from the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge — and offers a penetrating look at the profound human rights implications of America’s longest war.

The film recognizes drug abuse as a matter of public health, and investigates the tragic errors and shortcomings that have resulted from framing it as an issue for law enforcement. It also examines how political and financial corruption has fueled the war on drugs, despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures. The drug war in America has helped establish the largest prison-industrial system in the world, contributing to the incarceration of 2.3 million men and women and is responsible for untold collateral damage to the lives of countless individuals and families, with a particularly destructive impact on black America.

• We Are the Giant                                      (YouTube, Amazon)

The film narrates the stories of ordinary individuals who are transformed by the critical moral and personal challenges they encounter when standing up for what they believe is right.

• Do Not Resist                                          (Amazon)

DO NOT RESIST is an urgent documentary that explores the militarization of local police departments- in their tactics, training, and acquisition of equipment- since 9/11.

• Little Fires Everywhere                              (Hulu)

Little Fires Everywhere is an American drama web television miniseries, based on the 2017 novel of the same name by Celeste Ng. It premiered on Hulu on March 18, 2020 and consists of eight episodes. Little Fires Everywhere follows “the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. The story explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger in believing that following the rules can avert disaster.”

• American Son                                         (Hulu)

American Son is an American drama film directed by Kenny Leon and starring Kerry Washington, Steven Pasquale, Jeremy Jordan and Eugene Lee. The film is based on the Broadway play of the same name.

• Fruitvale Station

Fruitvale Station is a 2013 American biographical drama film written and directed by Ryan Coogler. It is Coogler’s feature directorial debut and is based on the events leading to the death of Oscar Grant, a young man who was killed in 2009 by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale district station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system in Oakland.

• TED TALKS has assembled 250 talks to help understand racism in America

TED believes that Black lives matter and that each of us has a role to play in opposing racism, injustice and oppression.  We invite you to use our archive of powerful ideas from experts and thought leaders as a starting point to understand the roots of racism, its painful consequences—and how we can combat it together.  (from the TED website on 6.8.2020)

• Take an Implicit Bias Test (For more information about the Project Implicit research group, see https://www.projectimplicit.net)
• TED TALK by Baratunde Thurston

Baratunde Thurston is an Emmy-nominated writer, activist and comedian who addresses serious issues with depth, wit and calls to action. He believes the stories we tell help shape the world in which we live. Also, he’s from the future.Baratunde Thurston explores the phenomenon of white Americans calling the police on black Americans who have committed the crimes of … eating, walking or generally “living while black.” In this profound, thought-provoking and often hilarious talk, he reveals the power of language to change stories of trauma into stories of healing — while challenging us all to level up.

Click for resources