This is a blog Jer wrote in July of 2016, we wanted to re-share it and the accompanying (updated) resources in light of this week’s tragic and familiar events.

The back-to-back deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile alongside the deaths of the Dallas police offers are a defining moment in the history of the United States. Our black brothers and sisters are out of breath while our white brothers and sisters are finally asking the question: What are we to do?!

While I’m not certain that the black community can wait for the white community’s learning curve, it is absolutely critical in this moment that we move our understanding of racism in America beyond surface level and into the depths.

In what follows, I offer a learning journey for my white brothers and sisters.  I’m grateful for my black friends and colleagues who have offered grace and patience with me through my own learning journey and have helped me develop this pathway.  It by no means is a comprehensive pathway, but it is an important beginning.

Friends.  Please take this journey.  Listen long and be changed by what you hear.

~~

Involuntary Servitude -> Mass Incarceration

• Slavery By Another Name: The Re-enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglass A. Blackmon
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblind by Michelle Alexander
• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson
• Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores by Dominque Gilliard
• The House I Live In (Film Trailer)

Culture of Suspicion

• Color of Fear (Documentary Trailer)
  
• “When Whites Just Don’t Get It” – New York Times 6-part series by Nicholas Kristof

Classics

• I Have a Dream / Letter from a Birmingham Jail, by Martin Luther King Jr.
• Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa to Slavery and Emancipation: A Three-Dimensional Interactive Book with Photographs and Documents from the Black Holocaust Exhibit by Velma Maia Thomas
• Documentary: Africans in America: America’s journey through Slavery (view entire 4-part series)
  
• A Time to Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King, Jr., for Students (King Legacy) by Martin Luther King Jr.
• Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 by Juan Williams and Julian Bond.

For Evangelicals

• Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion And The Problem of Race in America by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith
• Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep us Apart by Christena Cleveland
• Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism by Curtiss DeYoung and Allan Boesak
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone
• God of the Oppressed by James H. Cone
• A Black Theology of Liberation by James H. Cone
• Race: A Theological Account by J. Kameron Carter
• Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities into Unity, Wholeness, and Justice by Brenda Salter McNeil
• America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis
• The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right by Lisa Sharon Harper
• I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
• Becoming Brave: Finding the Courage to Pursue Racial Justice Now by Rev. Dr. Brenda Salter McNeil
• Shalom Sisters: Living Wholeheartedly in a Brokenhearted World by Osheta Moore
• Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation by Latasah Morrison
• Can White People Be Saved?: Triangulating Race, Theology and Mission by Love Sechrest
• Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman
• The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race by Willie James Jennings
• Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism by Drew G.I. Hart
• The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby
• White Awake: An Honest Look at What it Means to Be White by Daniel Hill

Other Books

• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Relative by Leyla Saad
• So you Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
• How to be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
• Waking Up White: and Finding Myself in the Story of Race by Debby Irving
• White Fragility: Why Its So Hard For White People to Talk about Race by Robin Di’Angelo
• White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
• Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas Blackmon
• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward Baptist
• The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter
• Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity by David Swanson
• Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment is Killing America’s Heartland by Jonathon M. Metzl
• Hegemony How-To: A Roadmap for Radicals by Jonathon Smucker

Films

• 4 Little Girls (Documentary)
• I’m Not Your Negro (Documentary by James Baldwin)
• The Murder of Emmett Till (Documentary)
• Fruitvale Station (Film)
• 3 1⁄2 minutes, Ten bullets (Documentary)
• Crips & Bloods: Made in America (Documentary)
• 13th (Documentary)
• When They See Us (Film)

Misc.

• Black Prophetic Fire by Cornel West
• Enfleshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being by M. Shawn Copeland
• Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil by Emilie Townes
• Too Heavy a Yoke: Black Women and the Burden of Strength by Chanequa Barnes
• “The Fight to Redefine Racism” by Kelefa Sanneh in The New Yorker (August 2019)
• Color Blind or Color Brave? A Ted Talk by Mellody Hobson
• “It May Only Take 3.5% of the Population to Topple a Dictator—With Civil Resistance” by Erica Chenoweth
• One Continuous Graveyard: Emancipation and the Birth of the Professional Police Force by Keri Leigh Merritt on Black Perspectives (July 11, 2016)

Webinars:

• Seeing & Lamenting Whiteness with Andre Henry
• Dear White Peacemakers with Osheta Moore

Blogs:

• Andre Henry
• Osheta Moore
• Dominique Gilliard
• Christena Cleveland
• Ebony Johanna Adedayo
• Lisa Sharon Harper
• Efrem Smith