BLACK LIVES MATTER RESOURCES
I have stayed silent on social media recently because I felt I didn’t know what to do say or do as a privileged white woman. I’ve been shocked, heartbroken and confused by what’s going on, and how this is still going on. we all have a voice, the power to change and educate and we HAVE to break the silence for humanity and not let this go on anymore.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it must feel like, the constant fear, the heartbreak and the worry. I will never know, but I want to do my best to understand.
I, like a lot of us, have a lot of educating to do - so below I I have created a list of resources to learn, educate, petition, donate and to help make a change. I’ve also included books, podcasts, TV Shows and Films that I will be ordering, reading and watching over the next few weeks to educate myself and learn more. Please try and do the same. This cannot go on for any longer. Every post and petition is impactful, no matter how big or small.
I understand that I will never understand, but I stand. I stand by each one of you for #blacklivesmatter and will continue to make steps moving forward. I’m taking 100% accountability for this platform, my voice, and the responsibility that I have.
RIP George Floyd, I am so sorry this happened.
DONATE
Donate to the George Floyd Memorial fund here
Donate to the official Black Lives Matter campaign here.
Donate to the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust.
Donate to The Bail Project here.
Donate to the Belly Mujinga memorial fund here.
Donate to the Ahmaud Arbery memorial fund here.
Donate to The Movement For Black Lives here.
Sign the Justice for George Floyd petition here.
Sign the petition for #WeCantBreathe here.
Sign the Justice for Belly Mujinga petition here.
Sign the Justice for Breonna Taylor petition here.
Sign the petition to Defund the San Diego Police Department.
Sign the petition to include More Black History in PA School Curriculums.
Sign the petition to Ban or Restrict Tear Gas.
Sign the petition to reopen the case of Wallace Gardner Jr.
Sign the petition to make children’s book on Race & Anti-Racism a Requirment in the Classroom.
Books
Why I’m no longer talking to White People about Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge
n 2014, award-winning journalist Reni Eddo-Lodge wrote about her frustration with the way that discussions of race and racism in Britain were being led by those who weren't affected by it. She posted a piece on her blog, entitled: 'Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race'.
Her words hit a nerve. The post went viral and comments flooded in from others desperate to speak up about their own experiences. Galvanised by this clear hunger for open discussion, she decided to dig into the source of these feelings.
Exploring issues from eradicated black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Reni Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential new framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism.
Me & White Supremacy by Layla F Saad
Me and White Supremacy teaches readers how to dismantle the privilege within themselves so that they can stop (often unconsciously) inflicting damage on people of colour, and in turn, help other white people do better, too.
When Layla Saad began an Instagram challenge called #MeAndWhiteSupremacy, she never predicted it would spread as widely as it did. She encouraged people to own up and share their racist behaviors, big and small. She was looking for truth, and she got it. Thousands of people participated in the challenge, and over 90,000 people downloaded the Me and White Supremacy Workbook.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
In her Booker Prize-winning novel, Evaristo explores the inter-connecting stories of 12 characters, most of whom are Black British women. The book explores their challenges, their triumphs, their relationships and the racism they face throughout their lives. If you’re looking to learn more about how racism and white privilege affects Black British people daily, still, then this story will give you an insight.
Girl, Woman, Other follows the lives and struggles of twelve very different characters. Mostly women, black and British, they tell the stories of their families, friends and lovers, across the country and through the years.
Joyfully polyphonic and vibrantly contemporary, this is a gloriously new kind of history, a novel of our times: celebratory, ever-dynamic and utterly irresistible.
Between The World & Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him -- most urgently, the mystery of race, an abstract concept that put the safety of him and the people he loved the most, including his son, in constant jeopardy.
Here, Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings - moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's "long war on black people," or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The landmark work on race in America from James Baldwin, whose life and words are immortalized in the Oscar-nominated film I Am Not Your Negro.
'We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation'
James Baldwin's impassioned plea to 'end the racial nightmare' in America was a bestseller when it appeared in 1963, galvanising a nation and giving voice to the emerging civil rights movement.
Told in the form of two intensely personal 'letters', The Fire Next Time is at once a powerful evocation of Baldwin's early life in Harlem and an excoriating condemnation of the terrible legacy of racial injustice.
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
Taking the premise that it's not enough to be neutral in situations of injustice and to simply know that racism is wrong, Kendi calls upon readers to be actively anti-racist and proactive, while detailing how to do so. Rather than figuring out how to fix things within our pre-existing systems, Kendi uses the power of memoir to reimagine a society that is not free from racism, but also actively working against racism at all times.
I know why the Caged birds sing by Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou's debut memoir has become an classic beloved worldwide. Her six volumes of autobiography are a testament to the her talents and resilience.. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a Black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother's lover. However, far from being dispiriting, James Baldwin writes, 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.'
'I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am always talking about what it's like to be a human being. This is how we are, what makes us laugh, and this is how we fall and how we somehow, amazingly, stand up again' Maya Angelou
They Can’t Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery
A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, offering both unparalleled insight into the reality of police violence in America and an intimate, moving portrait of those working to end it.
Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.
They Can't Kill Us All grapples with a persistent if also largely unexamined aspect of the otherwise transformative presidency of Barack Obama: the failure to deliver tangible security and opportunity to those Americans most in need of both.
Films & TV Shows
Just Mercy, Destin Daniel Cretton
Strong Island, Yance Ford
21 Days a Slave, Steve McQueen
13th, Ava DuVernay
The Long Song, Mahalia Belo
When They See Us, Ava DuVernay
BlackKklansmen, Spike Lee
If Beale Street Could Talk, Barry Jenkins
Dear White People, Justin Simien
Self Made: Inspired by the life of Madam C.J. Walker, Kasi Lemmons
Podcasts
Code Switch, hosted by Shereen Marisol Meraji and Gene Demby (listen here)
1619, hosted by Nikole Hannah Jones (listen here)
Still Processing, hosted by Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris (listen here)
Code Black, co-founded by Renee Duncan, Bunmi Adeoye and Maxine McDonald (listen here)
All my Relations, hosted by Matika Wilbur and Adrienne Keene (listen here)
Lynching In America (listen here)
Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw (listen here)
About Race hosted by Reni Eddo-Lodge (listen here)
Witness Black History hosted by BBC World (listen here)
Slay In Your Lane hosted Yomi Adegoke and Elizabeth Uviebinené (listen here)
AfroQueer hosted by Selly Thiam & Aida Holly-Nambi (listen here)
Caravan hosted by Tau Zaman (listen here)