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 Relevant Links
Relevant Documents
Resources for Exploring Racial Harmony/Racism
The resources below are broken down into several major categories by source, subject matter and general intent of the authors/editors. Those marked with an *asterisk are highly recommended, and those with a **double asterisk are most highly recommended.
- Catholic Resources
*American Catholic Social Teaching. Thomas J. Massaro and Thomas A. Shannon, eds.
The Liturgical Press, 2002. [Especially useful is a CD-ROM with significant social justice
documents from American Catholic bishops, individually and collectively, including their
last major pastoral letter on race relations, Brothers and Sisters to Us.]
Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: U.S. Catholic Bishops Speak Against Racism, January 1997-June 2000. U.S. Catholic Conference, 2001 [Now out of print]
Secular Resources
- Scholarly Analyses
[These resources examine racial issues primarily through academic lenses such as sociology, economics, political science, law, history, and/or the physical sciences, and most contain many footnotes as well as bibliographies useful for further research or study. For the most part, these resources are produced by people who have done serious research on the issues at hand, and they will be most valuable for those who are similarly serious about educating themselves.]
*Affirmative Action: Social Justice or Reverse Discrimination? Edited by Francis J. Beckwith and Todd E. Jones. Prometheus Books, 1997. [Views affirmative action from a number of legal, academic and ideological perspectives on opposite sides of the issue, revealing its complexity.]
*American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton. Harvard University Press, 1993. [Makes a powerful case that
persistent racial segregation in housing is the key to the persistent damage done by
racism in virtually every realm of American life.]
Race, Racism and Science: Social Impact and Interaction. John P. Jackson, Jr. and Nadine Weidman. Rutgers University Press, 2006. [Explores the involvement of science and scientists in the development and use of racial classification schemes, while also examining how the larger social context influenced this development and was in turn impacted by it]
*When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in
Twentieth-Century America. Ira Katznelson. W. W. Norton, 2006. [Scholarly, detailed,
densely footnoted examination of the ways in which whites have long benefited from
preferential treatment in the administration of government programs such as Social Security and the G. I. Bill]
**White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism. Paula S. Rothenberg,
editor. Worth Publishers, 2002. [Extensive overview of racial privilege, with chapters from a number of academic and journalistic perspectives. Highly informative and
thought-provoking]
*Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Michael K. Brown, Martin
Carnoy, Elliott Currie, Troy Duster, David B. Oppenheimer, Marjorie M. Shultz, and David Wellman. University of California Press, 2003. [Densely
end-noted, multi-disciplinary analysis of contemporary racial issues, highly critical of those who dismiss race-conscious efforts to remedy existing racial inequities]
**Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria (And Other Conversations About Race).
Beverly Daniel Tatum. Basic Books, 2003. [Straightforward insights on racial matters, by a psychologist specializing in racial identity formation in children, who is now president of
Spellman College. New by the same author: Can We Talk About Race?: And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation)]
*Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. Frank H. Wu. Basic Books, 2002.
[Richly textured look at race in America from an Asian American perspective.
Densely end-noted, with an extremely valuable and thorough list of references
broken down chapter-by-chapter.]
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Teaching-Oriented Resources
[These resources are directly geared toward educating self and others regarding significant issues in the realm of racial justice and harmony, and many include specific suggested actions that can be taken by teachers and students at various levels to help change attitudes and dismantle institutional racism.]
*Racial Healing: Confronting the Fear Between Blacks and Whites. Harlon L. Dalton.
Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1995. [Conversational, anecdotal discussion concerning the
difficulties of honest, meaningful interracial dialogue]
*Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach. Louise Derman-Sparks and Carol Brunson Phillips. Teachers College Press, 1997. [Excellent, practical resource for teachers and others seeking to become knowledgeable allies in the struggle against racism]
*Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, Revised Ed.
Paul Kivel. New Society Publishers, 2002. [Thorough discussion of many aspects of racism, with some practical suggestions for becoming a change agent]
*We Can’t Teach What We Don’t Know: White Teachers, Multiracial Schools.
Gary R. Howard. Teachers College Press, 1999. [Good resource for teachers, deals with
some of the more subtle complexities of teaching in a multiracial setting]
Privilege, Power, and Difference. Allan G. Johnson. Mayfield Publishing Co., 2001.
[Note: Extends discussion to include gender and sexual orientation issues in ways not totally aligned with Catholic teaching, but otherwise excellent and understandable presentation of how difference is used as a basis for social, economic, and political power and privilege.]
*My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness. Patricia Raybon.
Penguin Books, 1996. [Christopher Award-winning first-person narrative of experiences with racism and the struggle to forgive]
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Anecdotal/Journalistic Resources
[Resources in this category are generally written in a somewhat more casual, less academic style than the scholarly resources above, relying less on formal research and more on journalistic reporting and personal experience. As a result, they often impact the heart as much or more than the head, and in many cases, this impact can be quite powerful.]
Black Like Me. John Howard Griffin. Signet, 1989 (Afterword © 1996) [Although first published in 1960, this classic chronicle of the ultimate “walk a mile in the other person’s shoes” experiment still sheds significant light on race relations, especially in the Epilogue.]
Color-Blind: Seeing Beyond Race in a Race-Obsessed World. Ellis Cose. HarperCollins Publishers, 1997. [Thoughtful and thought-provoking journalistic look at contemporary race relations, with some helpful suggestions on how to transform them in a positive direction. Another Cose book, Rage of a Privilege Class, examines the frustrations of middle-class black Americans and makes discoveries that will likely surprise some.]
*The Darden Dilemma: 12 Black Writers on Justice, Race, and Conflicting Loyalties.
Ellis Cose, editor. HarperCollins, 1997. [An eye-opening look at race and criminal justice issues through the eyes of twelve different commentators, who use the O. J. Simpson trial and verdict, and the racially polarized response to it, as a springboard for discussing the issues]
*The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege. Robert Jensen.
City Lights Publishers, 2005. [No-holds-barred exploration of the history and perpetuation of white privilege in American society]
*Let Nobody Turn Us Around: Voices of Resistance, Reform and Renewal. Manning Marable and Leith Mullings, editors. Rowman and Littlefield, Publishers, 1999. [Outstanding anthology of African American writing from 1789 to the present day on social and political issues]
**When Race Becomes Real: Black and White Writers Confront Their Personal Histories.
Edited by Bernestine Singley, with an Epilogue by Derrick Bell. Lawrence Hill Books,
2002. [Out of print, but still available through the editor’s Web site at
http://bernestinesingley.com. A collection of intensely personal, often gripping stories from a variety of black, white, and brown writers detailing how they were awakened to the significance of race in our society. A unique, highly recommended resource for individual reading and group discussion.]
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Audio-Visual Resources
Commercial Feature/Made-for-Television Films Highlighting Racial Themes
*Crash
Driving Miss Daisy
A Family Thing
Glory
Grand Canyon
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
**The Long Walk Home
Men of Honor
Miss Evers’ Boys
A Patch of Blue
A Raisin in the Sun
Remember the Titans
*Something the Lord Made
*The Tuskegee Airmen
**The American Experience: New Orleans [Two-hour, post-Katrina PBS documentary on New Orleans, highlighting the city’s racial history, rich interracial culture, and changes brought on by segregation.]
Suitable for Children
The Color of Friendship
*Ruby Bridges
Selma, Lord, Selma
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A-V Resources Explicitly Focused on Racial Issues (available for presentations w/ORE staff)
*True Colors [ABC News 20/20 documentary w/Diane Sawyer, showing an experiment in which a black and a white subject with otherwise similar backgrounds attempt to buy a car, rent an apartment, and shop in a retail mall, resulting in very different experiences for each]
*Ethnic Notions [Examines history of racially demeaning images of blacks in print media, TV and films, including advertising and popular literature. Thought-provoking examination of an area of American life that receives too little attention in terms of its impact on the development of racial and ethnic stereotypes]
**Race: The Power of an Illusion [Three-hour, three-episode program dealing with the lack of a scientific grounding for racial classification, the history of the concept of race, and the real-life ramifications of racial classification in American society]
The Complete Blue Eyed, with Jane Elliott [Hard-hitting, documentary-style presentation of the work of Jane Elliott, who pioneered experiments in which subjects are arbitrarily divided on the basis of eye color, and then subjected to drastically different treatment on opposite sides of the eye-color line, simulating the way(s) that race is used as a basis for differential treatment. Elliott’s in-your-face approach will make many uncomfortable, but that is precisely her point: how comfortable should we be with discrimination of this sort?]
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Internet Resources
Southern Poverty Law Center: http://www.splcenter.org/index.jsp
[This is the official site of an organization whose efforts were instrumental in weakening the power and influence of the Ku Klux Klan, and which continues the struggle for racial justice on many fronts.]
(Related site, focusing on education re various forms of bias and diversity issues:
http://www.tolerance.org/index.jsp
)
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:
http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/projects/socialteaching
[Note: this link is for the USCCB page on Catholic Social Teaching. Perhaps unfortunately, our national bishops’ conference no longer deems racial issues worthy of a heading of their own.]
*“Race to Our Credit”: http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-01/06wise.cfm
[A brief, but insightful and brutally honest article on white privilege by a white writer and Tulane University alumnus, Tim Wise]
Information on the Port Chicago Incident (a relatively little-known World War II incident involving an explosion that killed 320 men, including 202 black enlisted men who, with poor training and inadequate supervision, had been loading ammunition aboard a docked ship. Some survivors afterward refused an order to return to ammunition-loading duty. Publicity regarding this incident and a subsequent mutiny trial was a factor that helped bring about the desegregation of the American military):
http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq80-1.htm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/07/17/MNGGL7N6IQ1.DTL
http://www.museumca.org/picturethis/4_4.html
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