Race & Ethnicity

 

Check out these recommended readings focused on race, ethnicity, and other intersecting identities. 

 

Oregon Was Founded As a Racist Utopia by Matt Novak

When Oregon was granted statehood in 1859, it was the only state in the Union admitted with a constitution that forbade black people from living, working, or owning property there. It was illegal for black people even to move to the state until 1926. Oregon’s founding is part of the forgotten history of racism in the American west.

White Debt by Eula Biss

Reckoning with what is owed — and what can never be repaid — for racial privilege.

The Case for Reparations by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

Keep Your Hands Off of My Kimono, White People by Diep Tran

Appropriation is about more than facepaint; it’s about pretending that minority cultures are metaphors or fantasy worlds or backdrops for white narratives.

Race Is in the Air We Breathe and the Water We Drink: The Moral Failure in Flint by Jim Wallis

How would you feel if you realized your children’s water was being poisoned, and your government didn’t seem to care? That’s the story of the parents of 8,000 mostly poor and black children in Flint, Michigan.

What I told my White Friend When He Asked For My Black Opinion On White Privilege by Lori Lakin Hutcherson

Explaining privilege through the use of personal experience.

 

Check out our new Whiteness Library in the MRC!

Whiteness has a long history in European imperialism and epistemologies. It does not simply refer to skin color but an ideology based on beliefs, values, behaviors, habits and attitudes, which result in the unequal distribution of power and privilege based on skin color. Whiteness represents a position of power where the power holder defines social categories and reality—the master narrator. (Adapted from STAND Framing and Learning Antiracism.http://www.ucalgary.ca/cared/whiteness)

“The Heart of Whiteness” by Robert Jensen 

“Understanding White Privilege: Creating Pathways to Authentic Relationships Across Race” by Frances E. Kendall 

“The History of White People” by Nell Irvin Painter

“Dear White America: Letter to a new minority” by Tim Wise 

“White Like Me” by Tim Wise