Anti-racism Resources

Here are offices, resources and programs that may be helpful to you as we move forward with this important work.

Resources for students, staff and faculty

Racial Equity Task Force Teams

The teams provide their first progress report.

Five Ways to Have Better Conversations Across Difference

It’s not easy, but we can find common ground in difficult conversations.

Ibram X. Kendi, PhD, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Founding Director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research, was asked in a recent interview what people could do to support our communities of color and try to change a system deeply rooted in inequality, racism, and murder.

There is no single answer, he responded, except this: “Get involved after the marches and rallies. Invest your time and money in community-based programs that work. Support Black and brown-owned businesses.”

Current Research, Events & News

Latest Research & Events

Selected Research Centers

Diversity Offices & Resources

Boston University

Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine

School of Public Health

Other

Responding to/Managing Inappropriate Behavior & Treatment

Boston University Ombuds

EthicsPoint

Appropriate Treatment in Medicine

Professionalism Resource Service

Other Resources

Mental Health Support

Faculty Professional Development

LGBTQIA+

Student Groups

Medical Education Office

Student Affairs

Books, Videos, Podcasts

Angelique C. Harris, PhD, Associate Dean for Diversity & Inclusion, BUMC Director of Faculty Development and Director of Faculty Development and Diversity, Department of Medicine, suggests the resources listed below.

Nonfiction Books

A Black Women’s History of the Unites States – Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America – Ronald Takaki
A People’s History of the United States – Howard Zinn
Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism – Bell Hooks
An African American and Latinx History of the United States – Paul Ortiz
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States – Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Assata, an Autobiography – Assata Shakur
Bad Feminist – Roxane Gay
Becoming – Michelle Obama
Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy – Barbara Applebaum
Be an Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive – Jennifer Brown
Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces – Karen Catlin
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment – Patricia Hill Collins
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
Blackballed: The Black and White Politics of Race on America’s Campuses – Lawrence Ross
Color-Blind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity – Tim Wise
Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement – Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland – Jonathan Metzel
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower – Brittney Cooper
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City – Matthew Desmond
Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement – Angela Davis
How to be an Anti-Racist – Ibram X. Kendi
How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective – Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
In Search of Our Mothers Gardens – Alice Walker
Intersectionality – Patricia Hill Collins
Intersectionality as Critical Social Theory – Patricia Hill Collins
Killing Rage: Ending Racism – Bell Hooks
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Teacher Got Wrong – James Loewen
March (Graphic Novel) – John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present – Harriet A. Washington
No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America – Darnell L. Moore
No Tea, No Shade. New Writings in Black Queer Studies – E. Patrick Johnson
Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, From Ferguson to Flint and Beyond – Marc Lamont Hill
Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Freire
Queer People of Color: Connected but Not Comfortable – Angelique Harris, Juan Battle, Antonio Pastrana, Jr.
Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience – Laura Morgan Roberts
Racism Without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States – Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America – Melissa Harris-Perry
Sister Outsider – Audre Lorde
So You Want To Talk About Race – Ijeoma Oluo
Stamped from the Beginning – Ibram X. Kendi
Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions – Tiffany Jana, Michael Baran
The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley – Malcolm X
The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – Richard Rothstein
The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap – Mehrsa Baradaran
The Myth of the Model Minority: Asian Americans Facing Racism – Rosalind S. Chou
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
The Souls of Black Folk – W.E.B. Du Bois
This Bridge Called My Back: Writing by Radical Women of Color – Cherry Moraga
The Burning House: Jim Crow and the Making of Modern America – Anders Walker
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th Century America – Ira Katznelson
When the Irish Became White – Noel Ignatiev
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Race – Robin DiAngelo
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son – Tim Wise
White Rage – Carol Anderson
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together In the Cafeteria? – Beverly Daniel Tatum
Women, Race, & Class – Angela Y. Davis
Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs – David R. Roediger
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name – Audre Lorde

Fiction Books

Podcasts

1619 (New York Times)

An audio series on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through the oldest form of storytelling.

About Race

Co-discussants Anna Holmes, Baratunde Thurston, Raquel Cepeda and Tanner Colby host a lively multiracial, interracial conversation about the ways we can’t talk, don’t talk, would rather not talk, but intermittently, fitfully, embarrassingly do talk about culture, identity, politics, power, and privilege in our pre-post-yet-still-very-racial America.

Code Switch (NPR)

The fearless conversations about race that you’ve been waiting for! Hosted by journalists of color, our podcast tackles the subject of race head-on. We explore how it impacts every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, sports and everything in between. This podcast makes ALL OF US part of the conversation — because we’re all part of the story.

Intersectionality Matters!

A podcast hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory.

Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast

This podcast features movement voices, stories, and strategies for racial justice. Co-hosts Chevon and Hiba give their unique takes on race and pop culture, and uplift narratives of hope, struggle, and joy, as we continue to build the momentum needed to advance racial justice in our policies, institutions, and culture. Build on your racial justice lens and get inspired to drive action by learning from organizational leaders and community activists.

Pod For The Cause (The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights)

This podcast was created for those of you wanting to effect change, who understand the importance of restoring our democracy and want to engage in deep conversation around the issues. From the courts to immigration, we’re seeing unprecedented attacks on the values we hold near and dear. At Pod for the Cause, we’re going to tackle these issues and more. Our friends in the movement will be stopping by to have these conversations, and they promise to be real, straightforward and honest.

Pod Save the People (Crooked Media)

Activism. Social Justice. Culture. Politics. DeRay Mckesson explores news, culture, social justice, and politics with Sam Sinyangwe, Kaya Henderson and De’Ara Balenger. They offer a unique take on the news, with a special focus on overlooked stories and topics that often impact people of color. There’s also a weekly one-on-one interview with DeRay and special guests. The experts, influencers, and diverse local and national leaders who come on the show go deep on social, political, and cultural issues.

Seeing White

Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story.Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?Host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017.

Speaking of Racism

A podcast dedicated to honest discussions on race and racism.

The United State of Anxiety

A show about the unfinished business of our history and its grip on our future. It works to connect the present with the past. Underlying almost every cultural divide and fervent debate as we approach the 2020 election is one basic question: Who is the USA for? Who’s allowed to live here? Who has control over whose body? Who gets to vote? Who gets access to a good public education? Who sets the definition of justice? Our states may be united into a nation, but we have never agreed on answers to these basic questions. At times, it feels like a civil war. The arguments we’re having now started in the aftermath of the actual Civil War, when Americans set out to do something no other country had tried before: to build the world’s first multiracial democracy.

The Wilderness (Crooked Media)

What will it take to defeat Donald Trump in November? In season 2 of The Wilderness, Jon Favreau looks for the path to victory in 2020 by talking to voters, strategists, organizers, and candidates in the battleground states that will decide the election.