These resources are incomplete yet comprehensive.
They are an excellent start to your journey of self-education on these topics.
Redlining
Redlining: In the 1930s, federally supported city assessors rated neighborhoods in nearly 200 cities across the United States, and created maps based on their ratings. These color-coded maps were used to determine the loan worthiness of neighborhoods. Many of these neighborhoods continue to feel the social, health, and environmental consequences of these ratings nearly a century later. Unsurprisingly, many of these neighborhoods have the highest and most concentrated levels of poverty and crime.
Richie Harper GIS Mapping Projects
OSU area descriptions handouts Canton, Ohio
Social vulnerability and the legacy of redlining
Forgotten History of Redlining
The lasting legacy of Redlining
Redlining and Neighborhood Health
The lasting impacts of segregation and Redlining
Racist Redlining policies impact today
Did Redlining happen the way we thought it did?
The lines that Shape Canton, Ohio
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White Fragility
White fragility refers to the discomfort White people may experience in reaction to discussions about racism
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, PhD
What is White Fragility and Why is it a Problem?
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Implicit/Unconscious Bias
It is important to distinguish implicit racial bias from racism or discrimination. Implicit biases are associations made by individuals in the unconscious state of mind. This means that the individual is likely not aware of the biased association. Implicit racial bias can cause individuals to unknowingly act in discriminatory ways. This does not mean that the individual is overtly racist, but rather that their perceptions have been shaped by experiences and these perceptions potentially result in biased thoughts or actions. No one is immune from having unconscious thoughts and associations, but becoming aware of implicit racial bias creates an avenue for addressing the issue
African men stereotypes in Hollywood
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Mass Incarceration
The United States is the leading country in incarceration and prison populations; we incarcerate more than 2 million people. Our population makes up less than five percent of the world’s population, but our inmates make up nearly 25 percent of the world’s inmate population. But the term mass incarceration does not only refer to the sheer number of people in our criminal justice system; it is also in reference to the underlying motivations. America did not always incarcerate at such a high rate. In fact, for the 50 years prior to 1972, the number of people in jails and prisons was steadily around 330,000. Since then, the numbers have increased six-fold. Those aren’t the only shocking statistics though: about 60 percent of the population of incarcerated people in America are Black or Hispanic. One in three Black men and one in six Hispanic men will go to prison in our country.
American History, Race, and Prison
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Code Switching
Code Switching: When an individual switches their dialect or accent to another one during or between interactions with others. Some may feel the need to change their accent or way of speaking because of predetermined stereotypes that may be placed on them because of a certain accent an individual can possess. For example, a person with a southern accent may be viewed as less intelligent because of stereotypes already in place, this can cause the person with the accent to switch to a more formal way of speaking in order to avoid any unnecessary comments.
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White Privilege
White Privilege: White fragility is the term used to describe the difficulty white people living in North America have talking about race and race relations. In U.S. society, white people enjoy a deeply unconscious and internalized sense of belonging. Because of this, white people often avoid conversations about race because society has taught them to feel entitled to be free of race-based stress. White fragility, as written in Robin DiAngelo’s book, is an inability to talk about race and deal with the emotions that come with having conversations about race relations. Luckily, white fragility is not a permanent state, but something one can overcome with anti-racist practice.
How to explain white privilege
A conversation with white people about race
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Critical Race Theory/ Buried History
Critical Race Theory: Critical Race Theory (CRT) is an unspoken agreement that racism is not a result of individual bias or preconception, but something within legal systems and policies. This theory explains that racism is a part of everyday life so people, white or not, who are not purposely racist can still make choices that affect racism. Theorists mainly aim accusations at theorists who advocate for policies that precisely take race into account. It's important to recognize the true definition of CRT because it is not usually portrayed accurately in books, movies, and by critics.
Create a short blurb (5th grade reading level) explaining what buried history is
Teaching people’s history website
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Racism
Racism: The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines racism as, “a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.”
Myths White people tell about race
Deconstructing Racism ted talk
Uncomfortable conversations with a black man
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Microaggression
Microaggression: Merriam-Webster defines microaggressions as “a comment or action that subtly and often unconsciously or unintentionally expresses a prejudiced attitude toward a member of a marginalized group (such as a racial minority).” Simply put, microaggressions happen when someone makes a comment or does something that negatively affects a disadvantaged person or group of people. This can happen both accidentally and on purpose. Some common examples of microaggressions include making comments directed at someone’s race, ethnicity, gender, or sexuality.
microaggression activity handout
NPR what is a microaggression?
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Urban Renewal
Urban Renewal: While cities may do independent improvement projects, federal involvement within cities has continued since redlining began. This happens most often to raze "blighted or "slum" neighborhoods in both large and small cities. On the surface, renewal projects may seem like a positive initiative. Historically, however, they have led to the destruction of thousands of homes and neighborhoods. Urban renewal in the 1960s was meant to rejuvenate cities, but instead led to the displacement of underrepresented communities
Richie Harper GIS Mapping Projects
Fighting the effects of urban renewal
The tragedy of urban renewal: NYC
Short North, Freeways, Suburbs, and urban renewal
James Baldwin- Urban Renewal means negro removal
Treme’: How Urban Renewal destroyed the cultural heart of New Orleans
Negro Removal: The destruction of the Hayti District
Urban Revitalization or Planned Extinction?
Urban Renewal Destroyed Black Neighborhoods
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Sundown towns/ The Green Book
Sundown Towns: A sundown town is a community that for decades kept non-whites from living in it and was thus “all-white” on purpose. Some allowed a non-white household or two as an exception. Anna and Jonesboro are not unique or even unusual. Beginning in about 1890 and continuing until 1968, white Americans established thousands of towns across the United States for whites only. Many towns drove out their black populations, then posted sundown signs. Others passed laws barring African Americans after dark or prohibiting them from owning or renting property. Still, others just harassed and even killed those who violated the custom. Some sundown towns also kept out Jews, Chinese, Mexicans, Native Americans, and other groups.
Sundown Towns: a hidden dimension of American racism James W. Loewen
The real story of the Green Book
Maps of sundown towns by state
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Antiracism
Saying “but I’m not racist” also allows people to avoid participating in anti-racism. It’s a way of saying “that’s not my problem” while failing to acknowledge that even people who are not racist still reap the benefits of a system that is biased against other people.
In his book How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi, a leading scholar on race and racial discrimination, examines many of the individual attitudes held by both White and non-White people that play a role in sustaining racism. It is impossible, Kendi notes, to be “not racist” if you hold negative attitudes about entire groups of people based on their race, ethnicity, or cultural heritage.
It is the casual, insidious forms of racism that people are often blind to that play such a pivotal role in upholding racism. People don’t see it because these attitudes are often so deeply ingrained that it takes the ability to be deeply self-critical to examine and challenge those attitudes.
As Kendi explains in How to Be an Antiracist: "the only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it — and then dismantle it."
Professor Ibram X. Kendi on being an antiracist
What it means to be anti-racist
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Voter Suppression
Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age, and disability discrimination. Before and during the American Civil War, most African-Americans had not been able to vote. After the Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, causing some Southern Democrats and former Confederate states to institute actions such as poll taxes or language tests that were ostensibly not in contradiction to the U.S. Constitution at the time, but were used to limit and suppress voting access, most notably African American communities that made up large proportions of the population in those areas, but in many regions, the majority of the electorate as a whole was functionally or officially unable to register to vote or unable to cast a ballot
Understanding voter suppression
A history of voter suppression
Uncounted: The crisis of Voter Suppression in America by Gilda R. Daniels
The racist reality of voter suppression
****Additional Links to websites, videos, articles, and books need to be added ****