Statement of Solidarity & Resources for Justice
June 1, 2020
The Religion, Race & Democracy Lab grieves with the world over the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless Black lives that have been lost due to police brutality and systemic racism throughout American history. We stand in solidarity with the victims and with those who protest for a more just and equitable world for Black and Brown lives.
As is our mission, the Lab will continue to support UVA faculty and students in the production of stories that promote a more just democracy in the U.S. and around the world.
A Short List of Readings in Religious Studies and Racism
Compiled by Oludamini Ogunnaike, Assistant Professor of African Religious Thought and Democracy, with the following disclaimer:
While such reading lists may be helpful in generating discussion and raising awareness about the structures, institutions, and history of anti-Black oppression (especially within our own disciplines, departments, and academic institutions), they are in no way a substitute for the work that must be done to dismantle these structures and institutions and address the injustices of this ever-present history. The topics raised in these readings are not mere academic abstractions, but existential realities and threats and trauma for many of us and should be approached as such.
Sylvia Wynter, “No Humans Involved”
Stanford Professor Sylvia Wynter’s Open letter to her colleagues after the 1991 LA protests in response to Rodney King’s beating, she forcefully argues that scholars and the academy as a whole must “marry our thought” and work to the plight of the impoverished and oppressed and produce new forms of knowledge instead of those that reproduce the brutal hierarchies of the status quo:
https://www.newframe.com/long-read-knowledge-must-mutate-be-fully-human/
Audio recording:
https://www.spps.org/cms/lib010/MN01910242/Centricity/Domain/125/baldwin_atalktoteachers_1_2.pdf
Reflection on the above by Clint Smith:
Vincent Lloyd, “Introduction: Race and Secularism in America” (the whole edited volume is worth a read, especially the conclusion)
Lorgia Garcia-Peña (interview), “Decolonizing the University”:
http://bostonreview.net/race/lorgia-garcia-pena-mordecai-lyon-decolonize-university
Oludamini Ogunnaike, “Of Canons and Cannons”:
https://renovatio.zaytuna.edu/article/of-cannons-and-canons
Stephen Finley and Biko Gray, “God Is a White Racist: Immanent Atheism as a Religious Response to Black Lives Matter and State-Sanctioned Anti-Black Violence”:
Mallory Nye, “Does Religious studies Have a Problem with Race?”:
https://medium.com/religion-bites/does-religious-studies-have-a-problem-with-race-e7d94efe3765
other short papers by the same author on the topic:
https://medium.com/religion-bites/malory-nye-on-race-modernity-and-religion-dddff4b6ca97
(good links for further reading in many of these).
Ana Deumert, “On Racism and How to Read Hannah Arendt”-about much more than the title suggests, especially towards the end of the short article—very good links.
Oludamini Ogunnaike, “From Heathen to Subhuman”
“#BlackintheIvory”-a recent Twitter hashtag in which black students and faculty share their experiences of being black in the academy:
https://twitter.com/BlackInTheIvory
Francine Diep, “‘I Was Fed Up’: How #BlackInTheIvory Got Started, and What Its Founders Want to See Next”
https://www.chronicle.com/article/I-Was-Fed-Up-How/248955
Jason England and Richard Purcell, “Higher-Ed’s Toothless Response to the Killing of George Floyd”:
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Higher-Ed-s-Toothless/248946
Stephen Finley, Lori Martin, Biko Gray, Teaching In Higher Ed Podcast, “On Not Affirming Our Values: African American Scholars, White Virtual Mobs, and the Complicity of White University Administrators”
Marlene Daut, “Becoming Full Professor While Black”: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Becoming-Full-Professor-While/246743
Chris Lebron, “White America Wants me to Conform”-special mention of UVA and Charlottesville
Jennifer Williams,”Our pain is not your classroom”-Special mention of Charlottesville
W.E.B. DuBois, “The Souls of White Folk” (essay that coined the term, “the religion of whiteness”):
https://medium.com/religion-bites/the-souls-of-white-folk-by-w-e-b-du-bois-354f91ca08ef
James Baldwin, “1964 Interview With Robert Penn Warren”:
https://lithub.com/james-baldwin-i-cant-accept-western-values-because-they-dont-accept-me/
James Baldwin, “An Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Davis”:
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1971/01/07/an-open-letter-to-my-sister-miss-angela-davis/
Angela Davis, “Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation”:
https://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davispoprprblli.html
Robin D.G. Kelley, “What Did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?”:
http://bostonreview.net/race/robin-d-g-kelley-what-did-cedric-robinson-mean-racial-capitalism
Giovanni Vimercati, “The Continuing Relevance of Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”:
Kehinde Andrews (interview), “Why We Should All Read Malcolm X Today”:
Brandon Terry, “MLK Now”:
http://bostonreview.net/forum/brandon-m-terry-mlk-now
Frantz Fanon, “On Violence”
Elizabeth Alexander, “The Trayvon Generation”
David Brooks “How Moderates Failed Black America”
Olufemi Taiwo, “Cops, Climate, COVID: Why there is only one crisis”
Christy DeGallerie, “Nice Racists and their White Fragility”
Tre Johnson, “When black people are in pain, white people just join book clubs”
Lauren Michelle Jackson, “The Limitations Of An Anti-Racist Reading List”
Jessica Crispin, “You can’t defeat Racism with Reading Lists-Take it from a Feminist-We Tried”
Short Youtube Clips:
James Baldwin, “The Reason Black People are in the Streets”
Angela Davis, “Excerpt from the Black Power Mixtape”
Frantz Fanon, “Raw Materials” from Concerning Violence
Angela Davis, “Limits of Mainstream Feminism”
James Baldwin,“Response to Yale Professor on the Dick Cavett Show”
“Excerpt from Cambridge Debate with William Buckley Jr.”
Toni Morrison, “On Racism”
Malcolm X, “Response to Police Brutality”
“We need Education Not Legislation”
Malcolm X interview on the CBC
MLK Jr. On Wealth Inequality
Cornel West, “On Black Lives Matter and US Imperialism”
Akala on “Britain, Race, and Imperial Legacies”
Dylan Rodriquez, “It’s Not Police Brutality”
Robin DiAngelo, “On White Fragility”
Kimberly Jones, “How We Can Win”
Longer Clips:
James Baldwin 1979 short London Speech:
MLK Jr. “The Three Evils of Society”
A Time for Burning (short documentary):
Malcolm X, “The House Negro and the Field Negro”:
James Baldwin 1979 Speech at Berkeley:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQejcZc4uFM
James Baldwin 1964 Speech to The Non-Violent Action Committee:
Malcolm X Q&A with Ralph Cooper:
Malcolm X 1964 speech at the Militant Labor Forum, “The Black Revolution”:
James Baldwin National Press Club speech (1986):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_1ZEYgtijk
Accessible General Background/History for Media Literacy:
Angela Davis, “There is an unbroken line of police violence in the US that takes us all the way back to the days of slavery”:
Khalil G. Muhammad, “How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities”:
Chenjerai Kumanyika, “The History Of Police In Creating Social Order In The U.S.”:
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/05/871083599/the-history-of-police-in-creating-social-order-in-the-u-s
Garret Felber, “The Struggle to Abolish the Police Is Not New”:
http://bostonreview.net/race/garrett-felber-struggle-abolish-police-not-new
Raven Rakia, “Black Riot: The difference between riots and protests has more to do with who and where than what”:
https://thenewinquiry.com/black-riot/
Jamelle Bouie. “The Police are Rioting”:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/opinion/sunday/police-riots.html
Ryan Devereaux. “Police Attacks on Protestors are Rooted in a Violent Ideology of Grievance”:
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/06/police-brutality-protests-blue-lives-matter/
Keisha N Blain and Tom Zoellner, “’Riots’, ‘mobs’, ‘chaos’: the establishment always frames change as dangerous”:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/10/protest-black-lives-matter-police-activism
Patricia Williams, “Language is part of the machinery of oppression – just look at how black deaths are described”:
Karen Attiah, “How Western media would cover Minneapolis if it happened in another country”:
On Police and Prison Reform/Abolition:
Mariame Kaba, “Who’s Left: Prison Abolition”(a short comic):
https://medium.com/@icelevel/whos-left-mariame-26ed2237ada6
Olufemi Taiwo, “Power Over the Police”:
https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/power-over-the-police
Alex Vitale (interview), “What a World Without Cops Would Look Like”:
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/06/police-abolition-george-floyd/
Mariame Kaba, “Police reforms You Should Always Oppose”:
https://truthout.org/articles/police-reforms-you-should-always-oppose/
Maya Dukmasova with Jessica Disu and Mariame Kaba, “Abolish the police? Organizers say it’s less crazy than it sounds.”:
Longer Reads (but still accessible), and more lists of relevant articles/books/resources:
–Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?
Summary of Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s The Golden Gulag by Olufemi Taiwo:
https://transformharm.org/thinking-through-a-world-without-police/
Local Causes in Charlottesville:
I’m new to town, so I don’t know much about this but,
Charlottesville Black Lives Matter Twitter Page: Has lots of great information
https://congregatecville.com
The Public Housing Association of Residents in Charlottesville seems to be doing good work.