RACIAL EQUALITY & JUSTICE

Church

• Statement from Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (June 8, 2020)

• Statement from the Bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of New York (June 1, 2020)

• A Message Regarding Anti-Asian Violence from the Bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of New York (May 18, 2021)

• The Diocese of New York’s Reparations Committee

• Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing - The Center, which opened in October 2017, offers a model of prayerful education that forms and reforms individual and collective action: a defined curriculum, thoughtful training, pilgrimages, and dialogue.

• “A Christian Call for Reparations” by The Rev. Cn. Kelly Brown Douglas (July 2020)

• Becoming Beloved Community - The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation and justice

• A Service of Prayer & Witness Against Anti-Asian Violence - On March 23, our diocesan community gathered on the front steps of our cathedral for a service honoring victims and survivors of anti-Asian violence.

Webinars

Archived:

• Reimagining Policing: A 3-Part Series with The Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing

• Virtual Pilgrimage for Racial Justice with Church of the Heavenly Rest NYC & Episcopal Divinity School at Union

• Reshaping the Moral Imagination of our Nation with The Very Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas & Darren Walker

• Grace in a Year of Trials with the Diocese of Southwest Florida

  • “Reckoning with the Two Pandemics” with The Rt. Rev. Robert C. Wright, Bishop of the Diocese of Atlanta

  • “The Intersection of Faith and Civic Life” with The Rt. Rev. Robert C. Wright, The Very Rev. Randolph M. Hollerith & The Rev. Winnie Varghese

• Response to Hatred & Violence Against Asian Americans with The Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing and The Rt. Rev. Dr. Diana Akiyama

• Anti-Asian Violence in Context with The CEEP Network

Books

• How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi - Kendi weaves together ethics, history, law, and science, with a personal narrative of his own awakening to antiracism. Kendi asks what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can look beyond an awareness of racism to play an active role in building a truly just and equitable society. This book was recommended by Bishop Dietsche and the Social Concerns Commission of the Diocese.

• Living into God's Dream: Dismantling Racism in America, edited by Catherine Meeks - The authors address issues such as reasons for the failure of past efforts to achieve genuine racial reconciliation, the necessity to honor rage and grief in the process of moving to forgiveness and racial healing, and what we must do to move the work of dismantling racism forward.

• What's Faith Got to Do with It?: Black Bodies/Christian Souls by Kelly Brown Douglas - Reflection on the historical sins of Christians, particularly the role of white Christians in countenancing the lynching of African Americans, led Douglas to broader questions: What is it about Christianity that could lend itself to racism and its violent abuses? What is it about Christianity that has allowed it to be both a bane and a blessing for Black people?

• The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone - Theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of Black people. While the lynching tree symbolized white power and Black death, the cross symbolizes divine power and Black life, God overcoming the power of sin and death. For African Americans, the image of Jesus, hung on a tree to die, powerfully grounded their faith that God was with them, even in the suffering of the lynching era.

• The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby - This book goes to the roots of sustained racism and injustice in the American church. Tisby highlights the ways people of faith have actively worked against racial justice, as well as the complicit silence of racial moderates.

• Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation by Jennifer Harvey - Harvey argues for a radical shift in how justice-committed white Christians think about race. This work helps readers envision new racial possibilities, including concrete examples of contemporary reparations initiatives.

• So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo - Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to “model minorities” in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.

• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander - Alexander challenges the civil rights community - and all of us - to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America. Alexander shows that, by targeting Black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.

• Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge - Exploring issues from erased Black history to the political purpose of white dominance, whitewashed feminism to the inextricable link between class and race, Eddo-Lodge offers a timely and essential framework for how to see, acknowledge and counter racism.

• A Rap on Race by James Baldwin and Margaret Mead - On the evening of August 25, 1970, Margaret Mead and James Baldwin sat together on a stage in New York City for a 7.5-hour public conversation about such enduring concerns as identity, power and privilege, race and gender, beauty, religion, justice, and the relationship between the intellect and the imagination.

• Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks - A groundbreaking work of feminist history and theory analyzing the complex relations between various forms of oppression. hooks examines the impact of sexism on Black women during slavery, the historic devaluation of Black womanhood, and Black feminist history.

• Race Matters by Cornel West - West’s most incisive essays on topics including: leadership in the Black community, Black conservatism, Black-Jewish relations, myths about Black sexuality, affirmative action, and the legacy of Malcolm X.

• Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva - Bonilla-Silva documents how beneath our contemporary conversation about race lies an arsenal of arguments, phrases, and stories that we use to account for and ultimately justify racial inequalities.

• Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum - Tatum argues that Americans are reluctant to talk about issues of race, that we must begin to consider the psychological effects of racial identity development, and communicate racial identity across racial and ethnic divides.

• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde - In this collection of fifteen essays and speeches, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change.

• Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong - A collection of essays that combine memoir, cultural criticism, and history. Hong explores the formation of her political and racial consciousness as a child of Korean immigrants.

• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine - In essay, image and poetry, Rankine recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in daily life and media. Citizen is a testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.

• Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James W. Loewen - An analysis of American residential patterns. Thousands of “sundown towns” - almost exclusively white towns where it was an unspoken rule that Black people could not live there - cropped up throughout the twentieth century, most of them outside of the South. These towns used legal formalities to violence to create homogenous white communities.

Video

• Sacred Ground: A Film-Based Dialogue Series on Race & Faith - This series is part of Becoming Beloved Community, The Episcopal Church’s long-term commitment to racial healing, reconciliation, and justice in our personal lives, ministries and society. Small groups are invited to walk through chapters of America’s history of race and racism, while weaving in threads of family story, economic class, and political and regional identity.

• Vital Conversations: Realities of Race and Racism - From the United Methodist Church, a video series featuring contemporary theologians, sociologists, laity, clergy, and other thought-leaders dealing with challenges of race, culture, and oppression in the Church and world today.

• 13th - A 2016 American documentary on Netflix by director Ava DuVernay. The film explores the intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States; it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the US and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction of a crime.

• Under Our Skin - A Seattle Times project on race and racism, featuring video interviews.

• A Class Divided with Jane Elliot - A 1985 episode of the PBS series Frontline. Directed by William Peters, the episode profiles the Iowa schoolteacher Jane Elliott and her class of third graders, who took part in a class exercise about discrimination and prejudice in 1970 and reunited in the present day to recall the experience.

• Asian Americans - A five-episode documentary series from PBS. The five episodes cover Asian American history from 19th-century immigration and exclusion, the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, the model minority myth, labor organizing, student activism and more.

Children

• Children of God Storybook Bible by Desmond Tutu - Archbishop Tutu retells more than fifty of his most beloved Bible stories, artfully highlighting God's desire for people of every color and every background to love one another and to find peace and forgiveness in their hearts.

• A is for Activist by Innosanto Nagara - An ABC board book for families that want their kids to grow up in a space that is unapologetic about activism, environmental justice, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, and so on.

• Woke: A Young Poet's Guide to Justice by Mahogany L. Browne - A collection of poems by women of color that reflects the joy and passion in the fight for social justice, tackling topics from discrimination to empathy, from acceptance to speaking out. Grades 2-5.

• Story Time Animation Series - Story Time is a Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Center program and Atlantis School For Gifted Youngsters produced series that highlights children's books that are inspiring, empowering and educational.

• Black Lives Matter Instructional Library - Read-alouds for children, books from categories spanning Activism and Advocacy, Self-Love and Empowerment, Black History, books in Spanish.

• Spin a Soft Black Song: Poetry for Children by Nikki Giovanni - A collection of thirty-five poems for and about Black children celebrates the energy and joy of life.

• Skin Again by bell hooks - bell hooks has written several acclaimed children's books including Be Boy Buzz, Skin Again and Happy to Be Nappy, all illustrated by Chris Raschka.

Local Organizations

• Hudson Link - Formed in 1998, Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison provides college education, life skills, and reentry support to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Over 600 students are currently enrolled in their college preparatory and college programs in five New York State prisons. They are the only 501(c)3 non-profit in the US run by formerly incarcerated individuals to provide college degree-track programs in prison.

• National Bail Fund Network - This network is made up of over sixty community bail and bond funds across the country. The Community Justice Exchange regularly updates this directory of community bail funds that are freeing people by paying bail/bond and also fights to abolish the money bail system and pretrial detention.

• Sister to Sister (Yonkers) - Sister to Sister International is a nonprofit, non-governmental organization that links women, girls and families of African descent globally to the resources that connect, advance and strengthen them. They do this through advocacy, education and the promotion of African culture. Their primary areas of focus include Health and Wellness, Education and Global Affairs.

• Bronx Mutual Aid Network Relief Fund - This support network helps people access food and supplies, pickup prescriptions and complete errands for all those who are elderly, disabled and/or immunocompromised.

• Audre Lorde Project - ALP is a Brooklyn-based organization for LGBTQ people of color, which concentrates on community organizing and radical nonviolent activism around progressive issues within New York City.

• Black Alliance for Just Immigration - BAJI is a racial justice and migrant rights organization which engages in education, advocacy, and cross-cultural alliance-building in order to strengthen a national movement to end racism, criminalization, and economic disenfranchisement in Black immigrant, refugee and African American communities.

• UndocuBlack Network - UBN is a multigenerational network of currently and formerly undocumented Black people that fosters community, facilitates access to resources, and contributes to transforming realities.

• Protect Chinatown - This community-led chaperoning initiative formed in response to the increase in anti-Asian attacks across the nation. Volunteers sign up to escort others to their destinations.

Podcasts

• Code Switch - Journalists of color discuss how race impacts every part of society - from politics and pop culture to history, sports and everything in between. They explore the overlapping themes of race, ethnicity and culture, how these things play out in our lives and communities.

• Still Processing - New York Times’ culture podcast hosted by writers Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham, on pop culture and trending news.

• The Nod - Hosts Brittany Luse and Eric Eddings dig into under-explored corners of Black culture, told by the actors, musicians, writers, thinkers, chefs, activists, artists, and everyday people who live it.

• Floodlines - A narrative podcast from The Atlantic about Hurricane Katrina. "Floodlines is not about a natural disaster, but an unnatural one"; the team explores issues of race and class.

• 1619 - This podcast from the New York Times is an expansion of their 1619 Project. The project began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

• Historically Black - People submitted dozens of objects that make up their own lived experiences of Black history, creating a "people's museum" of personal objects, family photos and more. This podcast brings those objects and their stories to life through interviews, archival sound and music.

• School Colors - A documentary podcast from Brooklyn Deep about how race, class, and power shape American cities and schools. They follow generations of parents and educators fighting for their children in a rapidly changing Black neighborhood in Brooklyn, exploring the systemic inequities baked into New York’s schools.

• Black History Year - Black History Year introduces its listeners to thinkers and activists who have been erased or otherwise marginalized from mainstream conversations about history.

• The Stoop - Hosts Leila Day and Hana Baba start conversations about what it means to be Black and how we talk about Blackness. They tell stories from across the Black diaspora. It’s a celebration of Black joy with a mission to dig deeper.

• Witness Black History - Witness Black History features interviews with people who were present at key moments in Black and civil rights history.