LibGuides: Antiracism and Allyship Resources: Individual Racism and Bias

Books

Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America by Michael Eric Dyson
Publication Date: 2017
Dyson writes: "At birth you are given a pair of binoculars that see black life from a distance, never with the texture of intimacy. Those binoculars are privilege; they are status, regardless of your class [...] The problem is you do not want to know anything different from what you think you know [...] You think we have been handed everything because we fought your selfish insistence that the world...should be yours first and foremost, and if there's anything left, why then we can have some, but only if we ask politely and behave gratefully."
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
Publication Date: 2007
Collection of fifteen essays and speeches by black poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, one of the original proponents of intersectional feminism. These landmark writings are, in Lorde's own words, a call to 'never close our eyes to the terror, to the chaos which is Black which is creative which is female which is dark which is rejected which is messy which is...'

Policing "White Spaces"

Racism does not have to appear in the form of overt hatred and violent acts. Most often, racism manifests as implicit bias -- subtle and, at times, subconscious attitudes that inform our words or actions. Implicit bias shows up in many ways -- doctors treating and prescribing medicine differently to Black people, teachers giving harsher punishments to Black children, people calling the police on Black shoppers, babysitters, golfers, bird watchers--you name it--while they are simply going about their business.

"From 'BBQ Becky' to 'Golfcart Gail,' list of unnecessary 911 calls made on blacks continues to grow"
A list of unnecessary 911 calls made on Black people in 2018.
"Existing While Black"
An interactive oral history project created by HuffPost, "Existing While Black" presents the first-hand accounts of Black Americans who have been subjected to racial profiling and discrimination. Moments when someone called the police on them for no apparent reason aside from their race. Scenarios of cops stopping and searching them because their skin color made them look “suspicious.” Living with the constant anxiety of possibly having their presence — and innocence — questioned.

The Legacy of White Vigilantism

The racist roots of American policing: From slave patrols to traffic stops
"[T]he authorities didn’t punish the perpetrators when African Americans were lynched. Nor did the judicial system hold the police accountable for failing to intervene when black people were being murdered by mobs."
A History of the Slocum Massacre (1910)
A History of the Tulsa Race Massacre (1921)
Post-Katrina, White Vigilantes Shot African-Americans With Impunity
How white Americans used lynchings to terrorize and control black people
*CW: includes b&w primary source photos of lynchings
Used as a weapon of terror and control throughout the country, lynchings carried out by white people claimed the lives of thousands of African Americans well into the 1950s.

The Role of White Women in Racism

From Carolyn Bryant to Amy Cooper, there is a long history of white women leveraging their privilege to control, harass, and harm Black people. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of “lynch mobs desecrated black male bodies in the name of white feminine purity" (Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle, p. 100).

In recent years, due to the prevalence of smartphones and the ability to share widely on social media, we have repeated evidence of white women calling the police on Black people for doing ordinary, everyday things: barbecuing in a public park, swimming in a pool, bird watching. White women have even used Black people as scapegoats for their own crimes, as in the cases of Susan Smith and Patricia Ripley.