Getting Started
White supremacy culture, or the normalization and domination of Whiteness throughout society, undermines our best intentions and dehumanizes us all.
Before we can integrate our schools we must begin imagining and working for systems that support and normalize every person’s lived experience, while centering those voices and individuals who have historically been kept on the margins. These resources are a great starting point for learning about and practicing antiracism. For more ideas on getting started, download our Getting Started Guide.
Embrace Race is an online community supporting adults to raise all children to embrace their own and each others’ humanity, with a particular focus on healthy racial learning and identity development in early childhood.
The AntiRacist Table was created in response to the racial reckoning in America in 2020, as a way to bring AntiRacism into daily life as a daily practice. Educating Americans about African American history and the Black experience, along with rehumanizing Black people and motivating action to help create an AntiRacist America are its goals.
The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond
The People’s Institute believes that racism is the primary barrier preventing communities from building effective coalitions and overcoming institutionalized oppression and systemic racism. Through Undoing Racism Community Organizing Workshops, technical/human assistance and partnerships, The People’s Institute supports individuals, communities, organizations and institutions to move beyond addressing the symptoms of racism towards undoing the causes of racism.
White Awake is an online platform and nonprofit organization focused on popular education for people “socially categorized as ‘White’”. White Awake addresses the particularities of White racial socialization with tools and resources that prioritize spiritual practice, emotional intelligence, compassion, and curiosity alongside historical analysis and intellectual rigor. Their stated desire is to supplement social change work already being done – within activist networks, spiritual communities, and other social arenas – such that spiritual, educational, and cultural change is fully integrated into White people’s participation in collective liberation.
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
Saad, Layla F. (2020). Based on a workbook that grew out of an Instagram challenge that went viral, Me and White Supremacy teaches readers to understand their White privilege and their participation in White supremacy so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of color and, in turn, help other White people do better too.
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
McGhee, Heather (2021). From the financial crisis of 2008, to rising student debt, to collapsing public infrastructure, economist Heather McGhee found a root problem: racism in our politics and policymaking. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for White people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. McGhee finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own. The Sum of Us is not only a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here but also a heartfelt message, delivered with startling empathy, from a Black woman to a multiracial America. It leaves us with a new vision for a future in which we finally realize that life can be more than a zero-sum game.
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Rothstein, Richard (2016). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create Whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to Black Americans in White neighborhoods.
Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America
Harvey, Jennifer (2019). Living in a racially unjust and deeply segregated nation creates unique conundrums for White children that begin early in life and impact development in powerful ways. Raising White Kids offers age-appropriate insights for teaching children how to address racism when they encounter it and tackles tough questions about how to help White kids be mindful of racial relations while understanding their own identity and the role they can play for justice. IS’ book club pick for June 2020 and a thoughtful, practical resource for both parents of White kids and anyone with White kids in their lives.
White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America.
Hagerman, Margaret (2018). White Kids, based on two years of research involving in-depth interviews with White kids and their families, is a clear-eyed and sometimes shocking account of how White kids learn about race… By observing families in their everyday lives, this book explores the extent to which White families, even those with anti-racist intentions, reproduce and reinforce the forms of inequality they say they reject.
Kendi, Ibram X. (2019). 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. Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas that will help readers see many forms of racism more clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.
Okun, Tema (1999/2021). This short article offers a sharp overview of the characteristics of White supremacy culture. NOT replicating White supremacy culture in your child’s school is critical to building deep and lasting equity, inclusion and integration. Learn more at whitesupremacyculture.info.