Anti-Racism Reading List January 2025

“America didn’t drop the ball. America was a no-show for the Democracy vs Fascism championship game and instead indulged in tailgate debauchery with racists, bigots, misogynists, white supremacists, and xenophobes, as evidenced by the results of the 2024 presidential election."

“In a society that often seeks to diminish our worth, Black women must prioritise our own love and acceptance as an act of defiance and a pathway to holistic well-being. The burden is on everyone to foster a culture of support that allows Black women to thrive, free from the weight of expectation.”

“Because of historic and ongoing colonial oppression globally, being (or presenting as) white, or having fair-skinned European ancestors, comes with certain responsibilities concerning anti-oppression and decolonisation —particularly with privilege and wealth within white society. White supremacists reject, neglect and ignore these responsibilities. Our colonial world order allows and incentivises them to do so by default, often validating their rationales and congratulating them for white supremacist behaviours, or at most sentencing them to receive a light, loving and distinguished slap on the wrist.”

“Black users leaving X en masse means a loss of the cultural innovations that the community brings to the app, as well as a lack of representation when it comes to important conversations about politics, entertainment and social issues. Black creators have always been at the helm of the most important cultural moments.”

“The first step is to challenge entrenched citational practices. Scholars and institutions should prioritise the work of Global Majority thinkers, not as an act of tokenism but as a recognition of their intellectual contributions. This means foregrounding their perspectives in curricula, research, and policymaking.”

“picture Meta’s so-called “Black female” AI, Liv, brought to life without a single Black woman involved in the process. It’s a chilling modern reminder that the historical commodification of Black culture by white power structures is alive and well in the digital age. But Meta’s debacle doesn’t exist in isolation—it connects to wider sociopolitical dynamics, from Kemi Badenoch’s rise in the UK’s Conservative Party to the disturbing phenomenon of Black Trump supporters in America.”

“Since I’ve been identifying white mediocrity so boldly and consistently for so many years, something else has become clear: white mediocrity empowers white villainy. When white people hold themselves and one another to low standards, they give one another the benefit of the doubt for absolutely no reason and turn the benefit of the doubt for one another into a weapon against people of color.”

“In a digital environment already rife with misinformation, Meta is also willing to create lying machines for the sake of “engagement” while manipulatively deploying the language and likenesses of marginalized groups. And, in a political climate where Black people and queer people are under threat, did none of the developers think through the terrible decision to program a Black queer character to say, “My very existence does harm” as a way to keep my attention?”

“Here in the UK, there are increasingly loud voices who have objected to DEI initiatives run by US subsidiaries and UK-based companies. Voices that once whispered disquiet about issues with race-based policies have become full-throated. This remit has also extended to areas such as sexuality. Ironically those same protagonists who will rally about meritocracy miss the data that show how embedded inequity is in hiring practices, career progression, supplier practices, product development and so many other areas where conscious and unconscious biases rare their heads.”

“If we don’t course correct and take the proper actions to reclaim terminology and its meanings, we are opening the door to a more dire future for various marginalized communities. Openly and willingly allowing these changes in narratives to occur without any pushback shows that the U.S. has not advanced as much as many would like to believe – it’s just more of the same.”