Racial Justice
In curating these resources, we are guided by two critical shifts in the scholarship and organizing efforts that we think currently define the most thoughtful discussions in this area: those that push us towards racial healing and those that push us towards collective liberation.
Where to Start
Rethinking Schools provides timely and justice-oriented materials for educators in an effort to contribute a more liberatory perspective to the field, challenging the status quo upheld by traditional educational materials.
BEM is a comprehensive resource bank for activists, educators, and youth that centers the experiences and needs of BIPOC youth.
Teaching for Black Lives (book for purchase)
Teaching for Black Lives provides a critical framework for educators to draw from for creating curriculum and organizing their classrooms in alignment with a decolonial approach.
Civil Rights Teaching is an online collection of lessons and resources for teachers that highlight the contributions of everyday, though often little known, civil rights leaders. Empowering young people to search deeper than the stories of only the most well known heroes, CRT enables youth to see themselves in the powerful and courageous actions of people just like them.
Holcomb-McCoy, C. (Ed.). (2021). Antiracist counseling in schools and communities. John Wiley & Sons.
“Readers will learn how to define an antiracist approach to their work and behavior; proactively address racial incidents in schools; create college and career readiness systems for students of color; and apply antiracist perspectives to K-12 counseling practice, counselor professional development, school-family-community partnerships, counselor training programs, and counseling supervision.”
Deepening the Conversation
Romero Walker, A. (2021). Using critical media literacy to create a decolonial, anti-racist teaching philosophy. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 13(2), 86-93. https://doi.org/10.23860/JMLE-2021-13-2-7
Though geared towards educators in the higher education setting, this piece offers theory and content translatable to the K-12 setting. Walker urges educators to take an active role in adjusting their pedagogy to center anti-racism via adoption of a critical media literacy framework.
Brooke Harris Garad (2021) Fugitivity, Fantasy, Futurity, and Freedom: The Letter F for Critically Analyzing Children’s Literature, Equity & Excellence in Education, 54:2, 182-195, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2021.1951630
Offering invaluable considerations for elementary educators, this piece asks and answers questions about the importance of identifying children’s literature that centers themes of fugitivity and freedom, and how such a critical analysis effectively responds to generations-long calls for depictions of Black culture in children’s books.
Gurin, P., Nagda, B. R. A., & Zúñiga, X. (2013). Dialogue across difference: Practice, theory, and research on intergroup dialogue. Russell Sage Foundation.
Presenting data, research, and a compelling argument about the many benefits of intergroup dialogue as a tool for liberation both within and beyond various educational settings.
Moving Towards Action
Love as the Practice of Freedom (hooks, 2016)
In this piece, hooks outlines a love ethic, a radical reimagination of how to engage with movement work, and how to relate to, collaborate, and connect with one another. By invoking a love ethic, hooks asserts that we create more authentic opportunities to move away from an ethic of domination and supremacy.
Somatic Abolitionism, Resmaa Menakem
“Somatic Abolitionism is living, embodied anti-racist practice and cultural building —a way of being in the world. It is a return to the age-old wisdom of human bodies respecting, honoring, and resonating with other human bodies. It is not exclusively a goal, an attitude, a belief, an idea, a strategy, a movement, a plan, a system, a political position, or a step forward” (Menakem, n.d.)
Mia Sosa-Provencio, Magdalena Vázquez Dathe & Omkulthoom Qassem (2021) Tueresmiotroyo/You Are My Other Me: An In-The- Flesh Ethic of Care Centering Body and Emotionality as Speaking Subjects Fostering Dignity, Interconnection, and Racialized Healing, Equity & Excellence in Education, 54:3, 271-284, DOI: 10.1080/10665684.2021.1995534
“This research highlights the pedagogy of three diverse high school Ethnic Studies educators who teach predominantly low income youth of color. Findings reveal a life-giving, political In-the-Flesh Ethic of Care (IEC) infusing critical, culturally relevant ethics of care with pedagogies and epistemologies situated in the Brown and Black body,” (Provencio, et al. 2021).