Intro to Updated Resource List – Beginning, updated August 2021:
The Addressing Racism Collaborative (ARC) organized itself to help strengthen our individual meetings’ work to help us all move ahead to realize Friends’ commitment to antiracism.
Reading alone or checking websites are only part of our work. Learning and doing go hand in hand. Stepping out into this work may hold discomfort. Consider accompaniment with others.
This resource list is a beginning. It is not inclusive of all the resources we have gathered; it is simply a place to start. It will be followed in the future by lists to focus on action and other areas. This is the latest update of our original list.
We invite your thoughts and your additions to our lists. Please email Joan Broadfield: pym.friendsnrace@gmail.com
Resources to begin
An exercise at a session at Yearly Meeting helped us see what it would mean to be a truly antiracist organization. You can see this and more at the website after the 2019 continuing sessions. In 2021 Friends heard from the Diversity and Equity Sprint in a report here; and more is available here , and ‘way forward’ here. This is work the Yearly Meeting commits to.
Looking at the work of Antiracism:
- “Antiracism” is not a new concept, but it has been given clarity in a book by Ibram X Kendi. We have used the word in our collaborative due to its clarity about equity as the goal – a good first step to being fully antiracist.
- Ibram X Kendi explains in the first 20 minutes of this video how the focus of antiracism is key to understanding racism and antiracism. The full interview is a bit over 51 minutes.
Beginning the Conversation for Meetings & Families:
- “Race is not real, but race matters.” – Ted Talk 19 minutes.
- Structural Racism and Color Blindness: Learn more about these constructs
- “Intent vs Impact” and apology Chescaleigh offers some thoughts: Calling out / intent vs. impact – and apologizing.
- “Six Things to Correct” For families and others working with children
- Family webinars with Embrace Race
Ongoing resource help for families and others working with children
To read with young children in your life:
- Skin Again – by bell hooks, illustrations, by Chris Raschka (2004)
- A Kids Book about Racism – by Jelani Memory; illustrated letters and color (2019)
- More for young readers – books that are taken from life experiences that are well written will engage. Authors we’ve read: Jacqueline Woodson, Jason Reynolds, Mildred Taylor, and Walter Dean Myers
- Antiracist Baby! (see below for others in the series)
See also the resources listed from Religious Ed on racial justice.
Joining with others – webinars, events
- QREC – Quaker Religious Ed Collaborative conversations are offered as resources: See one on talking to children about injustice.
- “Embrace Race” Join this website to hear, even engage with families, beyond the yearly meeting.
Reading together:
A reading group, in your meeting or community, can be the place to explore ideas with others. The focus of the group can be a single race or mixed race group. The work required to build antiracism/equity has many angles.
Memoirs allow readers to learn from others’ experiences, giving opportunity to learn, to build understanding of complexities. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting library catalog is a resource to check.
- Trouble I’ve Seen by Drew Hart
- Killing Rage: Ending Racism by bell hooks
- Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Short items from Quaker writers in pamphlets available through Quaker Books
- “The Seed Cracked Open: Growing Beyond Racism” – Vanessa Julye
- “Letting Go of Illusion, Engaging Truth: Healing” – Niyonu Spann
- “Race, Systemic Violence and Retrospective Justice” – Harold D. Weaver Jr.
A recent part memoir – Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi – now appears in age appropriate versions:
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- Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You – written with Jason Reynolds for middle school. Watch this interview with the authors.
- Stamped (for kids): racism, antiracism and you, adapted by Sonja Cherry-Paul.
- Antiracist Baby – illustrations by Ashley Lukashevsky. See a print interview about why this was written.
Consider these 3 together if you have a meeting with children. See if members agree. All could start with Stamped (for kids) – or Antiracist Baby. Both are engaging; pause to reflect, answer questions. People can share experiences. As you read it together, older ones may want to pick up the one for middle school, or the larger more intense one. Learning together builds community through engaging in relationships. Even the conversation to consider it can be a starter, whether or not this is the choice.
Perhaps a set of essays might be a place to start. Or perhaps fiction.
- Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics by Cathy J. Cohen]
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Ready to dig deeper?
History to Relearn:
The history of white supremacy in the colonization of the Americas – even the development of the Christian church – is a sobering reality within the US and within the Quaker world, with African enslavement and the Indigenous peoples still here — and still working to right wrongs that continue.
- How did you learn history? How were you taught? What did we learn, and what have we seen about the effects of empire and colonialism in our world and our nation?
- What do you know of the Doctrine of Discovery ? How did it help write racism into everything, including how European Quakers thought about Indigenous children?
- Are you familiar with the history of actions taken by churches, including Quakers, to ‘claim’ portions of Africa and take the land of Indigenous peoples?
- On reparations and how we got here : connecting to capitalism and looking at the idea.
- Some of the work done about policing today may be understood by knowing the complex history about ‘Black Codes’
Ideas to re-examine
- White supremacy: What we thought is a small piece of it. How organizations look in a ‘white supremacy culture’ – a classic essay (1999) where each element has a corresponding antidote by Tema Okun — revised in a website
- From ally to co-conspirator – re-imagining allyship for real support
- Dr. Amanda Kemp, a member of Lancaster Meeting, has created workshops, resources to help in this work: Say the Wrong Thing She has a new workbook out as well, Stop Being Afraid: 5 Steps to Transform your Conversations about Racism
- In Friends’ history addressing Quakers and Indian boarding schools : not to judge, but to act in the present day.
Maybe you are hoping to get ideas about what your next step will be.
In addition to Stamped, and books mentioned above, here are some others to consider:
- My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies by Resmaa Menakem
- me and white supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Lala F. Saad
- So You Want to Talk about Race? By Ijeoma Oluo
- Living in the Tension: The Quest for a Spiritualized Racial Justice by Shelley Tochluk
- Deep Denial: The Persistence of White Supremacy in US History and Life by David Billings
- Towards the ‘Other America’: Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter by Chris Crass
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Exercises – to build commitment and self love:
- Consider what actions Friends today might take to show commitment to equity, antiracism.
- Journal about your experiences to bring awareness and to begin to imagine how to bring about equity.
- George Fox talks about understanding that we have the Light which can show us… and that light is love, even when it is a challenge. The work that Friends have done with ‘the Light’* can be useful with antiracism as well.
- Queries from Faith and Practice: Consider each of these queries with regard to the equity in your meeting.
* ‘The Light’ is a workshop/exercise outlined by the British Quaker Rex Ambler. The Library at Philadelphia Yearly Meeting has copies of it and the Pendle Hill pamphlet.
Quaker organizations are doing workshops and work that you can join and learn from:
- AFSC https://www.afsc.org/
- Friends General Conference https://www.fgcquaker.org/
- Friends Peace Teams https://friendspeaceteams.org/
- Pendle HIll https://pendlehill.org/
We invite your thoughts and your additions to our lists. You can email Joan Broadfield: pym.friendsnrace@gmail.com
