Anti-Racism Reading List July 2025

“In many ways, the reckoning failed—not for lack of effort, but because there was never full buy-in. While some of us worked tirelessly to build equity, others were busy dismantling democratic norms. They attacked voting rights, rolled back civil protections, ignored court rulings, and tested the limits of authoritarian power. And no one stopped them.

The warnings were clear—but the people with power chose to protect white supremacy instead of dismantling it.”

"In Eldoret, Kenya, a young man was promised $2,000 and a motorbike.

He signed papers he didn’t understand.

They took his kidney.

A woman in Germany paid €200,000 for it.

She flew home.

He went back — broke, bleeding, and silent.

This is NOT a “deal.”

It’s a transnational crime."

"Using enslaved people as collateral was not unusual. It’s how Jefferson borrowed money. Edmund Randolph did it. All the Randolphs did. And it’s how John Hampden Randolph got the lump sum to expand the slave camp that would become Nottaway"

"If resistance is systemic, then change must be, too. That means moving beyond one-off initiatives or performative gestures and focusing instead on the deeper patterns, structures, and mental models that sustain inequity. In systems thinking, these are called leverage points—places where a small but strategic shift can create ripple effects throughout the whole system."

"we’re expected to care. To watch. To comment. To be engaged.

But we’re doing something far more subversive. We’re redirecting our energy.

Instead of doom-scrolling, we’re co-creating joy. Organizing mutual aid. Holding healing circles. Taking naps that our ancestors didn’t get to take.

Our refusal to participate in the spectacle is not ignorance, it’s strategy. It’s spiritual hygiene. It’s knowing the difference between what's urgent and what's bait"

"So many in this country who demonize brave, determined and hardworking immigrants are themselves the descendants of immigrants.

Whiteness, however, allows those same individuals to distance themselves from their immigrant origin stories, and to dehumanize others."

"This is not a warning. It’s a field guide. Because if you are a courageous leader in education—whether you're from a historically excluded community or simply refuse to be silent—sooner or later, they will try to take your mic—and your seat.

Be ready."

"For generations, our grief, anger, and righteous resistance have been pathologized. Remember Drapetomania? The pseudodiagnosis fabricated to criminalize enslaved African people for attempting to escape captivity. This is what happens when white supremacy gets to hold the pen of legitimacy. But today, we shift the gaze. We turn the diagnostic mirror toward the settler-colonial psyche—toward the systems that continue to criminalize, gaslight, and erase. To name is to resist. To name is to reclaim our right to be well."

"While other civil rights leaders focused on domestic issues, Du Bois saw that racial oppression was a global system. He understood that what happened to Black Americans was connected to what was happening to colonised people in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.

This global perspective made him unique. He became one of the first people to build international networks of activists and intellectuals who were all fighting the same basic fight against racial oppression, just in different places."