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Learning Resources

Video Resources

Just Mercy

Bryan Stevenson, author of the new book, "Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption." With growing focus on the failures of the criminal justice system, Stevenson has been fighting those injustices case by case. He is founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a group based in Alabama that represents some of this country's most marginalized people — the poor and the wrongfully convicted.

Racism Prejudice Discrimination

We can’t talk about race without also discussing racism, so today we are going to define and explain prejudice, stereotypes, and racism. We’ll look at five theories for why prejudice exists. We’ll discuss discrimination and the legacies of institutional racism. We’ll also provide an overview of four types of racial interaction: pluralism, assimilation, segregation, and genocide.

A Tale of Two Schools

Aljazeera spent a day in the life of two U.S. high school students on both sides of the education divide. Here's their story in their own words.

The Legacy of American Slavery

Professor Melissa -Harris-Lacewell, Princeton University explains how the 'Electoral College' is to most serious Legacy of American slavery

Book Resources

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

February 2021 

 

This book draws on insights gleaned from travel across the United States, work at public policy and advocacy organization Demos, and life experience as a Black American woman to examine why racism is harmful to all Americans, not just the people who are most affected by it. In the process, she demonstrates why it is in everyone’s best interest to dismantle racial hierarchies.

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When Affirmative Action was White by Ira Katznelson

October 24, 2016

 

When Affirmative Action Was White elaborates on this core theme in four stages. First, the author looks at how African Americans were denied access to economic relief during the New Deal. Although many federal officials understood that black sharecroppers were the hardest hit group during the Great Depression, a full 65 percent of African Americans were denied access to social security benefits, government grants, elderly poor assistance, and unemployment insurance. Administered by local politicians throughout the South, New Deal relief programs were simply not given to the vast majority of African Americans. The result was the deepening of black rural poverty.

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The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

October 24, 2016

 

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States, but Alexander notes that the discrimination faced by African-American males is prevalent among other minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged populations. Alexander's central premise, from which the book derives its title, is that "mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow..

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More than Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City, By William Julius Wilson

October 27, 2016

 

Preeminent sociologist William Julius Wilson explains a groundbreaking new framework for understanding racial inequality, challenging both conservative and liberal dogma.

Research & Articles

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Poverty and Mythologies (based on The Geography of Poverty project, 2015) - by Matt Black

The most vulnerable Americans are being crushed by the grip of poverty, from the deserts of the Southwest through the black belt in the South, to the post-industrial, rusting factory towns that dot the Midwest and Northeast.

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The Social Construction of Whiteness - Racism by Intent, Racism by Consequence - by Teresa J. Guess

Sociology engages in studies of racial inequality, however, the sociology of race relations has historically failed to observe and report on the social construction of both sides of America’s black/white binary paradigm (Perea 1997) when addressing racial inequality. 

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Race & Racial Identity are Social Constructs - by Angela Onwuachi-Willig

Unlike race and racial identity, the social, political and economic meanings of race, or rather belonging to particular groups have not been fluid.

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The Average Black Family Would Need 228 Years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today - by Joshua Holland

Just as past public policies created the racial wealth gap, current policy widens it.

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White Fragility: Why It's So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism

Dr. Robin DiAngelo explains why white people implode when talking about race.

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Millions in U.S. Climb Out of Poverty, at Long Last - by Patricia Cohen (2016)

For the first time since the recession began, the poverty rate fell substantially in 2015.  The number of people living under the poverty line declined by about 3.5 million, with every major demographic group. 

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Listening to Ta-Nehisi Coates While White - by David Brooks

Conservative New York Times writer David Brooks responds to author Ta-Nehisi Coates' best selling book Between the World and Me, where Coates shares  his life and learning growing up on the streets of Baltimore, in a letter to his son.

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The City: Prison's Grip on the Black Family - by Trymaine Lee

The spirals of poverty and mass incarceration upend urban communities. Photos by MATT BLACK Words by TRYMAINE LEE

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The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration - by

Ta-Nehisi Coates

American politicians are now eager to disown a failed criminal-justice system that’s left the U.S. with the largest incarcerated population in the world. But they've failed to reckon with history. Fifty years after Daniel Patrick
Moynihan’s report “The Negro Family” tragically helped create this system, it's time to reclaim his original intent.

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