The following resources have been shared with and by the 2019-20 DFM cohort participating in the Equity Paradigm's "Racial Equity Learning Arc" (RELA).  These resources were shared via the email listserv used by the group.  

 

Where possible, we have noted when the resource was shared with the group, by whom, and any comment from the person sharing.   

 

These resources are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recently shared at the top.

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Children’s Book: “Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness” by Anastasia Higginbotham

 

Posted to the Listserve on Nov. 9, 2020 by Emily

I've been looking online for books for Alayla that tell stories about white people who have dedicated their lives to racial justice and found Not My Idea: A Book about Whiteness by Anastasia Higginbotham. This is a powerful book that addresses the history of whiteness and resistance to it, the impact on people of color, and the choice white people have to not participate in it.  The Durham Library carries it. It can also be bought at the Regulator.

 

TEDx Talk and Article: “Lose the Privilege, Gain the Connection” by Thomas Owen

 

Posted to the Listserve on Nov 9 by Marsha

"Privilege" is a word that I have been using a lot lately, without necessarily thinking carefully about what all it involves. I found this TEDx talk about what privilege is and how people respond to losing it quite engaging, but I found it even more poignant after I read the two-page Q&A article with Thomas that was printed in the New Zealand Yearly Meeting newsletter.  

 

Mike and I met Thomas Owens in 2018 when we were Resident Friends in New Zealand. He was only in Auckland for part of the year because he is a  kiwi who married a native Inuit from northern canada and splits his time between teaching in Auckland and spending time with his wife and child in northern Canada.  

 

Book: “Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger” by Lama Rod Owens

 

Posted to the Listserve on Nov 7, 2020 by Emily

For anyone interested in learning practices that help ground in spiritual anti-racism work, I recommend Love and Rage: The Path of Liberation Through Anger by Lama Rod Owens. Lama Rod Owens is a Dharma teacher and co-authored Radical Dharma: Talking Race, Love and Liberation with Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Jasmine Syedullah. I'm currently taking a 5-week course with him about the book and these practices are very helpful in grounding in awareness and recognizing emotions as they arise. This is such a helpful skill in anti-racism work--it helps each of us see the anxiety, anger, rage, fear, sadness present in ourselves, experience the emotion fully, and act from a place of consciousness of what's going on inside us. These are daily, lifelong practices that are such incredible tools for centering in anti-racism awareness and transformation.

 

Book: “Mindful of Race, Transforming Racism from the Inside Out” by Ruth King

Posted to the Listerv on Nov 7, 2020 by John

I have been reading Ruth King's book, Mindful of Race, Transforming Racism from the Inside Out, and I've found it helpful and inspiring.

 

PBS Special: “PBS Kids Talk About: Race and Racism”

Posted October 8

Hosted by activist, author, and the United States' first ever National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman, the PBS Kids Talk About: Race and Racism  offers parents and caregivers ideas about how to begin and build on conversations about race and racism in age-appropriate ways.

ARTICLE: “Noticing Patterns of Oppression and Faithfulness”, from the April 27, 2020 Friends Journal magazine. 

Posted to the listserve on Oct 11, 2020 by Marsha: 

Friends,

I recently found this Friends Journal article from April that gave me hope because it described how a Quaker group (in this case, New England Yearly Meeting) took steps to examine their meeting to "notice patterns of oppression and faithfulness." 

 

As I, and RELA participants, and DFM continue our work in trying to understand and name how racism and oppression happen in our Meeting, and what to do about it, I truly appreciated learning how other Quakers approached this work. I especially appreciated the strong basis of the work in faith, rather than only in secular terms.

 

RESOURCES shared by Alexa and others during the Sept 20 RELA Session on Zoom.

 

The Difference Between White Supremacy and White Supremacists (Part 1)

https://goodmenproject.com/social-justice-2/the-difference-between-white-supremacy-and-white-supremacists-part-i/

 

White Women doing White Supremacy in Nonprofit Culture

https://www.wokeatwork.org/post/white-women-doing-white-supremacy-in-nonprofit-culture

 

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PDF: Classroom Library Questionnaire

Shared by Jasmine during Sept 20 RELA presentation

A questionnaire to help educators determine how culturally responsive and diverse their classroom library is. Created by Lee & Low Books.  

https://www.leeandlow.com/uploads/loaded_document/408/Classroom-Library-Questionnaire_FINAL.pdf

 

RELA SESSION PRE-WORK, Sept 20, 2020

Robin DiAngelo’ article  “No, I Won’t Stop Saying White Supremacy”

 

Begin familiarizing yourself with attributes of White Supremacy Culture as defined by Tema Okun, and reflect on the ways in which they show up in your own actions.

 

“What Happened When My School Started to Dismantle White Supremacy Culture” 

 

 Read and reflect on “The Transformative Power of Practice” 

 

Podcast: Poet Claudia Rankine on her new book “Just Us” from NPR (33 min)

Posted by Cristobal on Sept 9, 2020

“In listening to this conversation, I found myself reflecting on how much RELA has shaped both my thoughts and feelings when engaging with something like this. I thought that others in this group might get something from the conversation that is worth sharing with loved ones, your small groups, or back to this group.”

 

Podcast: Robin DiAngelo and Resmaa Manaken in Conversation, presented by “On Being” with Krista Tippett  (50 minutes)

Posted by Marcella on July 13 

“I just found out about this episode of On Being with Krista Tippett published last week. She interviews Resmaa Menakem (author of My Grandmother's Hands on racialized trauma) and Robin DiAngelo (author of White Fragility). She interviewed just Resmaa Menakem on his own last month here.  It's a powerful episode and thought some of you may appreciate listening to this. I would love to be in dialogue with Friends about some of the sharings & teachings on this episode.

 

POETRY REVIEW: “N.C. Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green’s “The River Speaks of Thirst” Reclaims Stolen Breath” from The Indy Week, written by Alexis Pauline Gumbs  (with link to a recording of the poem). 

Posted June 11 by Emily

“I am feeling grateful to Alexis Pauline Gumbs for this beautiful piece and for N.C. Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green for her incredible poetry. You can listen to some poems from The River Speaks of Thirst at the end of the article, and I hope everyone listens to the first poem "Oh My Brother". 

 

PENDLE HILL TALK: “Planting in an Earthquake: balancing patience and urgency in times of change” by Minneapolis artist and activist Ricardo Levins Morales.  Posted on the Pendle Hill YouTube channel.

Posted June 6 by Nikki

 

STATEMENT from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). “ We Won’t Stop Until We Dismantle the Whole Racist System”  posted on AFSC website on June 4, 2020.

Posted June 8 by Nikki

“In this moment of truth, we cannot lose focus on what’s important: Black Lives Matter”

 

RESOURCES: Spiritual Anti-Racism Work

Posted by Emily, June 7

 

I’ve collected some resources that focus on spiritual anti-racism work--many from Friends of Color who have been doing this for a long time. I hope these messages ground us, disrupt us, call us into action, help us turn within, follow the leadership of Friends of Color within Quakerism and to continue to engage with and act to dismantle racism today and for the rest of our lives. I know you cannot engage with them all before we meet, but they are there for you this week. 

 

FGC’s Ministry on Racism Coordinator, Vanessa Julye recently shared this sermon from Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III on “The Cross and the Lynching Tree: A Requiem for Ahmaud Arbery” that powerfully lays out the history of systemic racism in this country and calls people of faith to act: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6985UG0Z3k

 

Niyonu Spann is a Quaker and founder of Beyond Diversity 101, and like Vanessa Julye, has been doing anti-racism “transformational heart-work” among Quakers for decades. This is a blog post she wrote in 2018 called “The Seed”: http://nivibes.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-seed.html

 

Dr. Amanda Kemp is a Quaker racial justice and mindfulness mentor who offers action, holding space meditation and talking with someone about racism in this post on Ahmaud Arbery and What to Do: https://www.dramandakemp.com/blog/ahmaud-arbery-and-what-to-do

 

Attached is a 1979 visionary lecture by our local shero Pauli Murray on theologies of liberation that still has many lessons for today, “Challenge of Nurturing the Christian Community in Its Diversity.” The only gospel suitable for this new consciousness ‘is one that opts for radical and massive change in oppressive attitudes and structures of power’.

 

Civil Rights legend Ruby Sales speaks of the “spiritual crisis of white America” in this podcast. Where does it hurt?: https://onbeing.org/programs/ruby-sales-where-does-it-hurt/

 

June 4th Call to Quakers to Stop Systemic Racism by FGC’s staff and members of the Institutional Assessment Implementation Committee.

 

ARTICLES ABOUT THE COVID-19 AND RACIAL DIVIDES

 

Racial Equity Resources for COVID-19 

Provided on April 6 by Alexa:

1. COVID-19 - Racial Equity & Social Justice Resources from Racial Equity Tools 

2. Why Don’t We Know Who the Coronavirus Victims Are? The Atlantic 

3. Ten Equity Implications of the Coronavirus COVID19 Outbreak in the U.S. NAACP 

4. Statement on COVID-19: Racial equity and racial equality must guide State action United Nations Human Rights 

5. Opinion: The Racial Time Bomb in the Covid-19 Crisis The New York Times 

6. Black Businesses Left Behind in Covid-19 Relief CityLab 

7. Early Data Shows African Americans Have Contracted and Died of Coronavirus at an Alarming Rate ProPublica 

8."COVID-19: Using a Racial Justice Lens Now to Transform Our Future"  Nonprofit Quarterly

9. Long-Standing Racial And Income Disparities Seen Creeping Into COVID-19 Care Kaiser Health News 

10. An Invitation to Center Race in Government Responses to COVID-19 Living Cities 

 

Additions

April 6 - Heather

This just came out today: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/coronavirus-exposing-our-racial-divides/609526/

 

April 9 - Anna

An Equitable Systems Transformation Framework for COVID-19:

https://www.nis.us/blog/0jpt3zevqsdwgd3hv2zv2n74xckhvz

 

April 10 - CSTA

Here's another article about how the coronavirus is affecting Americans differently, depending on underlying inequalities.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/04/two-pandemics-us-coronavirus-inequality/609622/  

 

ARTICLE: “Your Liberation is on the line” by Angel Kyodo Williams, posted online on Feb 2, 2020.

Posted April 8 by Karen

 

This is an article that has profoundly touched me - helped me to understand white supremacy in a new and deeper way.  Perhaps others will find it helpful as well. It is from a Buddhist publication called Lion’s Roar, which I find excellent and the teachings are always compatible with psychotherapy and also universalist in their approach.  I have provided the link below for the full article and a few of the paragraphs that I found particularly startling.

 

ARTICLE: “The New Fear for Asian-Americans Going Out in Public” by Chris Gayomali, published in GQ on March 31, 2020

Posted by Cristobal on April 3, 2020

“Friends, I would (selfishly) like to ask y'all, if you have the capacity, to read this article in GQ:

I share it because my wife Jocelyn, whose family is from Taipei, but was born here in the US, has been expressing significant fears around what sort of harassment our child will experience as he grows up due to Americans' association of COVID-19 with people who look like him.

She has emphasized when talking to me about this on multiple occasions that fears like this have been a part of being a Black family in this country for hundreds of years. In the interest of re-centering racial equity more broadly rather than focusing for too long on issues facing the AAPI communities. 

 

RESOURCES: Inner Work

Posted Feb 27, 2020 by Emily

 

Dear Friends in the RELA cohort,

I've recently been introduced to the work of Rhonda Magee through the resources listed below and am beginning to read her book The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness. I really appreciate the way she approaches social and racial justice work with a mindfulness practice and think it might resonate with Friends. Here are some videos and articles that may be of interest to you:

• A Mindful Approach to Race and Social Justice | Rhonda ... (video)

• The Inner Work of Racial Justice | Rhonda Magee - YouTube (video)

• A Conversation on Mindfulness, Bias and Racial Justice ... (interview)

• How to Fight Racism Through Inner Work (article)

• When Mindfulness and Racism Intersect - Mindful (interview)

 

RESOURCES:  The Racial Equity Glossary available on racialequitytools.org

Posted by Emily, Feb 27, 2020

Dear Friends, I wanted to share this resource from Racial Equity Tools website. Here is the introduction to the glossary of terms that may be helpful to folks: 

 

Our team is delighted to share an updated set of key terms for racial equity: The Racial Equity Glossary is freely available on racialequitytools.org. The glossary now includes more than 60 terms with definitions and sources for further reading, nearly half of which are new or updated. 

 

TWITTER: Michael Harriot on Black History Month

Posted by Julie, Feb 12, 2020

 

Hey RELA,

Michael Harriot is a writer and novelist. He posted a thread on Twitter recently for Black History Month that I thought Friends might enjoy reading. 

The first tweet reads, "One of the most popular misconceptions about black history is that over time, America has gradually become less racist and more tolerant. That is not true. Since y'all want a BHM thread, here's a thread about the evolution of racism in America."

Here is the full thread: https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1224881005120630787

 

I found it in picture form on Facebook here, if you prefer to read it that way: https://www.facebook.com/SocialDissonace/posts/1617504195079884?__tn__=H-R 

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PODCAST: Ask Codeswitch: What About Your Friends? Posted on NPR 

Posted by Cristobal, January 23, 2020

 

Friends, I wanted to share the following podcast episode of the NPR show Code Switch, which deals with the low percentage of cross-racial friendships that most Americans have, and the issues that can arise when people do have such friendships:

I think our group meetings have given me tools to appreciate something like this episode more deeply than I could have before, and this episode in turn has prompted me to reflect on how I have, can, and should engage with friends and colleagues.

 

ARTICLE: “What ‘Livability’ Looks Like for Black Women” published by Bloomberg City Lab

Posted by Anne on Jan 11, 2020 

“Here’s an article you might find interesting!”