Anti-Racist Resources - CCHR

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Restorative Justice in Our Work

Restorative Justice and Discrimination

Anti-Racist Resources


The New York City Commission on Human Rights’ Antiracist Resource Guide

The Commission is committed to fighting all manifestations of racism and discrimination. This work bridges culture, policy, research, law enforcement and community engagement – all necessary for transformative change.

Challenging the structures that foment racism around and within us is a lifelong journey. The New York City Commission on Human Rights has curated a set of antiracism resources to foster critical engagement and dialogue regarding historical and contemporary manifestations of bias, racism, and discrimination.

This set of resources is a start but is certainly not consummate. It includes books, articles, videos, documentaries, podcasts and links to organizations. For those resources that do not have links, many of them can be found by searching online.

Antiracism work cannot be done passively; these resources provide a foundation to understand and engage with the role of race and identity in the United States, and to take action towards dismantling white supremacy.

We hope these resources inspire you.

(For our younger readers, please also visit Stories For All: A Human Rights Reading List).

Select resources that investigate structural and institutional racism, white supremacy culture, and personal bias. The focus is on resources that address the U.S. context, though these issues manifest globally.

History

Criminal Justice / Legal System

Economics & Finance

Education

Climate & Environment

Housing & Home Ownership

Immigration

Gender & Sexuality

Labor and Employment

Personal Narratives

Science & Medicine

Social and Political Analysis

Voting

Guides to Practice

Documentaries/Films/Podcasts

Where to Buy Literature and Watch Documentaries

History

Books:

A Different Mirror A History of Multicultural America: A History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World by David Stannard

American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear by Khaled Beydoun

An African American and Latinx History of the United States by Paul Ortiz

Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955 by Carol Anderson

Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence Against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928 by Clive Webb and William D. Carrigan

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference, and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls by Jessica McDiarmid

Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment by Gary Y. Okihiro and Linda Gordon

Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano

Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones

The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minorities by Madeline Y. Hsu

The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andrés Reséndez

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

The Young Lords: A Radical History by Professor Johanna Fernandez

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold Story Of Anti-Asian Racism In The United States by Lon Kurashige

We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future by Deepa Iyer

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: A Political Perspective on Culture and Terrorism, journal article by Mahmood Mamdani

How Racism Was First Officially Codified in 15th-Century Spain by Jeffrey Gorsky

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, report by Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) (Trigger Warning: this resource depicts images of anti-Black violence).

Nazi Racism, a resource by Holocaust Encyclopedia

Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence after the Civil War, report by EJI (Trigger Warning: this resource depicts images of anti-Black violence).

Segregation in America, report by EJI (Trigger Warning: this resource depicts images of anti-Black violence).

Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade, report by EJI

The 1619 Project, historical resource on New York Times

The Havana Afrocubano Movement and the Harlem Renaissance: The Role of the Intellectual in the Formation of Racial and National Identity, journal article by Ricardo Rene Laremont and Lisa Yun

The Story of Islamophobia, journal article by Junaid Rana

Tracing the Roots of Discrimination by Pamela J. Johnson

What is Owed by Nikole Hannah-Jones

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Criminal Justice / Legal System

Books:

Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis

Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color by Andrea Ritchie

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment by Angela Davis

The End of Policing by Alex Vitale

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in The Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

Women, Race and Class by Angela Davis

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Criminalizing Normal Adolescent Behavior in Communities of Color: The Role of Prosecutors in Juvenile Justice Reform, journal article by Kristin Henning

(Police Can Use a Legal Grey Area to Rob Anyone of their Belongings by Kaveh Waddell

Race to Judgment: Stereotyping Media and Criminal Defendants, journal article by Robert M. Entman and Kimberly A. Gross

The Price of Freedom: Bail & Pretrial Detention of Low Income Non‐Felony Defendants in NYC, report by Human Rights Watch

The Sexual Politics of Abu Ghraib: Hegemony, Spectacle, and the Global War on Terror, essay by Mary Ann Tétreault

What Abolitionists Do by Dan Berger, Mariame Kaba, David Stein

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Economics & Finance

Books:

Black Wealth / White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality Thomas Shapiro and Melvin Oliver

How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems In Race, Political Economy And Society by Manning Marable

The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap by Mehrsa Baradaran

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist

The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation by Daina Ramey Berry

The Sum of Us : What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

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Education

Books:

Ghosts In The Schoolyard: Racism And School Closings On Chicago’s South Side by Eve L. Ewing

Haste to Rise: A Remarkable Experience of Black Education during Jim Crow by David Pilgrim and Franklin Hughes

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Monique W. Morris

Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks

We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom by Bettina L. Love

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America by Ira Katznelson

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Discipline Disparities and Discrimination in Schools by Nathan Barrett, Andrew McEachin, Jonathan Mills, and Jon Valant

DRESS CODED: Black Girls, Bodies, and Bias in D.C. Schools, report by National Women’s Law Center

Harvard once capped the number of Jews. Is it doing the same thing to Asian Americans now? by Ben Sales

Modern-Day Segregation in Public Schools by Sonali Kohli and Quartz

Still Separate, Still Unequal: Teaching about School Segregation and Educational Inequality by Keith Meatto

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Climate & Environment

Books:

A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet Washington

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Clean and White: A History of Environmental Racism in the United States by Carl Abraham Zimring

Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility by Dorceta Taylor

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Aftermath of Katrina: A Time of Environmental Racism, a story map by Esri

Behind the Garment: Injustices Caused by Fast Fashion to Communities, by Carol Mu

Intersectional Environmentalism: Why Environmental Justice Is Essential For A Sustainable Future by Leah Thomas

Trump's EPA Concludes Environmental Racism Is Real by Vann R. Newkirk II

Water/Color: A Study Of Race And The Water Affordability Crisis In America’s Cities, report by NAACP LDF

Why Sustainable Fashion Must Converge With Intersectional Environmentalism, by Suhani Dalal

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Housing & Home Ownership

Books:

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities by Jessica Trounstine

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Long Island: Divided, a Newsday Investigation, reported by Ann Choi, Keith Herbert, Olivia Winslow

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates

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Immigration

Books:

Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America by Philip G. Schrag

No Justice in the Shadows: How America Criminalizes Immigrants by Alina Das

The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect On America Edited By Nikesh Shukla And Chimene Suleyman

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Fatal Neglect: How Ice Ignores Death in Detention, report by the ACLU

Southern Hospitality?: Islamophobia and the Politicization of Refugees in South Carolina during the 2016 Election Season, journal article by Caroline Nagel

The State of Black Immigrants, report by BAJI

The Stories We Tell about Resettlement: Refugees, Asylum and the #MuslimBan, article by Nadia El-Shaarawi

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Gender & Sexuality

Books:

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective Edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock

Sister Citizen: Shame Stereotypes, and Black Women in America by Melissa Harris-Perry

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

Stop Telling Women to Smile: Stories of Street Harassment and How We're Taking Back Our Power by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by Saidiya Hartman

You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience by Tarana Burke and Brené Brown

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Labor and Employment

Books:

Defiant Braceros: How Migrant Workers Fought for Racial, Sexual, and Political Freedom by Mireya Loza

For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865, by Robert H. Zieger

No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor by Cindy Hahamovitch

The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History by David R. Roediger

Tomatoland: From Harvest of Shame to Harvest of Hope by Barry Estabrook

Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America by Joe William Trotter

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work, report by National Domestic Workers Alliance

Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity by Danyelle Solomon

Workplace discrimination is illegal. But our data shows it’s still a huge problem by Maryam Jameel and Joe Yerardi

Environmental Injustice Behind Bars: Toxic Imprisonment in America, report by The Global Environmental Justice Project

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Personal Narratives

Books:

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black Boy by Richard Wright

Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing: A Library of America by Illan Stavans

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzualda

Citizen 13660 (Graphic Novel) by Mine Okubo

Chopper! Chopper!: Poetry from Bordered Lives by Verónica Reyes

Country Called Amreeka U S History Retold Through Arab American Lives by Alia Malek

Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittney Cooper

Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations by Mira Jacob

Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Heavy: An American Memoir by Kiese Laymon

How Does It Feel to Be A Problem? Being Young and Arab In America by Moustafa Bayoumi

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Latinx Comic Book Storytelling: An Odyssey by Interview by Frederick Luis Aldama

Living on the Borderlines by Melissa Michal

Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto

Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong

Names We Call Home: Autobiography on Racial Identity, edited by Becky Thompson & Sangeeta Tyagi

The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir by Thi Bui

They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America's Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery

The Pink Box Poems by Yesenia Montilla

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Born Palestinian, Born Black, poem by Suheir Hammad

Combahee River Collective Statement by Combahee River Collective

Desirability: Do You Really Love Fat People When You Can’t Even See Us Beyond The Political? By Da’Shaun Harrison

Listening to Black Women and Girls: Lived Experiences of Adultification Bias, Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality report by Jamilia J. Blake and Rebecca Epstein

Muslim First, Arab Second, essay by Nadine Naber

Surveillance Effects: South Asian, Arab, and Afghan American Youth in the War on Terror, essay by Sunaina Maira

The White Space by Elijah Anderson

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh

You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument by Caroline Randall Williams

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Science & Medicine

Books:

Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan Metzl

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century by Dorothy Roberts

Killing the Black Body: Race Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by Dorothy E. Roberts

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

“Henrietta Lacks”: A Donor's Immortal Legacy by NPR (Author Interview with Rebecca Skloot)

Allegories on race and racism, TedTalk by Camara Jones

Racism and Health I: Pathways and Scientific Evidence, research article by David R. Williams and Selina A. Mohammed

Science Has a Racism Problem by Cell

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Social and Political Analysis

Books:

Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture by Angela Davis

As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom Through Radical Resistance by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

Culture of Anti-Racism in Latin America and the Caribbean by Peter Wade, James Scorer, and Ignacio Aguiló

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement by Angela Davis

Making All Black Lives Matter: Reimagining Freedom in the Twenty-First Century by Barbara Ransby

Pedagogy of the oppressed by Paulo Freire

Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by Barbara and Karen Fields

Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter

The Origin of Others by Toni Morrison

The Purpose of Power by Alicia Garza

The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

We Do This ‘Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba

Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

Arab and Muslim Communities Need to Talk About Anti-Blackness by Rowaida Abdelaziz

Arabs and Muslims in the Media after 9/11: Representational Strategies for a “Postrace” Era, journal article by Evelyn Alsultany

Ethnicity, Color, and Class among Dominicans in the United States and Puerto Rico, journal article by Jorge Duany

Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality report by Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia J. Blake & Thalia González

Islamophobia and “Privileging” of Arab American Women, journal article by Nada Elia

Jews Cannot Be Silent in the Face of Anti-Black Racism by Eliyahu Lann

Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism by Eric K. Ward

Terrorist Chic, essay by Humera Afridi

The Racial Infrastructure of the Terror-Industrial Complex, essay by Junaid Rana

Transforming Perception: Black Men and Boys, Perception Institute study by Rachel D. Godsil & Alexis McGill Johnson

White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun

White Supremacy Shaped American Christianity, Researcher Says by Carol Kuruvilla

Whiteness as Property by Cheryl Harris

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Voting

Books:

Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy by Darryl Pinckney

Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America by Ari Berman

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy by Carol Anderson

Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America by Gilda R. Daniels

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

The Ballot or the Bullet by Malcolm X

Why Virginia’s Restoration of Voting Rights Matter by The Atlantic

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Guides to Practice

Books:

Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement by Ejeris Dixon and Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha

For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood…and the Rest of Y’all Too by Christopher Emdin

Good White Racist: Confronting Your Role in Racial Injustice by Kerry Connelly

How to be Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi

How to Be Less Stupid About Race: On Racism, White Supremacy, and the Racial Divide by Crystal Marie Fleming

Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing by Suzanne Methot

Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla Saad

So You Wanna Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

This Book is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work by Tiffany Jewell

The Racial Healing Handbook: Practical Activities to Help You Challenge Privilege, Confront Systemic Racism, and Engage in Collective Healing by Anneliese Singh

Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work For Racial Justice by Paul Kivel

White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise

Articles, Essays, Reports, and Other Online Resources:

75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice by Corinne Shutack

Speak Up: Responding to Everyday Bigotry, resource by Southern Poverty Law Center

What to do if you are witnessing Islamophobic harassment, illustrated guide by Maeril

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Documentaries/Films/Podcasts

13th by Ava DuVernay

1700% Project: Mistaken for Muslim, short film by artist Anida Yoeu Ali and filmmaker Masahiro Sugano.

2016 NPS Finals - San Diego - "Islamophobia" by Rudy Francisco, Natasha Hooper, and Amen Ra, a poetry slam performance.

4 Little Girls by Spike Lee

A Matter of Place by The Fair Housing Justice Center

A Stray by Musa Syeed

Brick by Brick: A Civil Rights Story by Bill Kavanaugh

Chicano! History of the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement by Hector Galan

Dark Girls by Bill Duke

Dolores by Peter Bratt

Ethnic Notions by Marlon Riggs

Explained: Racial Wealth Gap, short web documentary by Vox

Free Angela and All Political Prisoners by Shola Lynch

Frontera! Revolt and Rebellion on the Río Grande, short documentary by John Jota Leaños

I Am Not Your Negro by Raoul Peck

Immigration Nation by Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz

LA 92 by T. J. Martin, Daniel Lindsay

Los graduados by Bernardo Ruiz

Moonlight by Barry Jenkins

Paris is Burning by Jennie Livingston

Reconstruction: America After the Civil War by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Reel Bad Arabs by Jack Shaheen

RiverBlue by Roger Williams and David McIlvride

(T)error by Lyric R. Cabral and David Felix Sutcliffe

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution by Stanley Nelson

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 by Göran Olsson

The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson by David France

The New Jim Crow Museum, video tour of Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University (Trigger Warning: the video depicts images of anti-Black violence).

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth by Chad Freidrichs

True Justice by Bryan Stevenson

When They See Us by Ava DuVernay

(Podcast) Black Wall Street 1921 hosted by Nia Clark and Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial

(Podcast) Code Switch, hosted by Shereen Marisol Meraji, Gene Demby, and other NPR staff

(Podcast) Intersectionality Matters, hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw

(Podcast) Justice in America hosted by Josie Duffy Rice and Clint Smith III

(Podcast) Uncivil hosted by Jack Hitt and Chenjerai Kumanyika

(Podcast) On Asian America: Sex, gender and the 'exotic other' by Kristin Leong and John O’ Brien

Where to Buy Literature and Watch Documentaries

Support Black-owned and independent bookstores when looking to purchase antiracist literature. You can search for your local brick-and-mortar or web-based stores online. Additionally, many news and media sites have compiled lists of Black-owned bookstores.

While many documentaries are available on popular streaming services, you can also look to the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Public Library, Queens Public Library, and your own educational intuitions to access some material.

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