We’ve been here: Selections from 6+ years of anti-racist internet reading
Recognizing and responding to racism is a journey. If you find yourself in a dramatically different place from where you were in 2014, or 2016, or 2 months ago — ready now to grapple with more ideas and activisms — you might have missed some of the best writing on race and racism.
(By “Best” I mean, subjectively, writing that was meaningful to me. Writing that taught me things I needed to know, or helped me understand what I already knew, or was real Art in the sense of communicating reality by bringing me to a new emotional place).
I did this once before, in November of 2014:
I considered editing that original list, updating it for its 11th half birthday, but I kind of think it deserves to be experienced in situ. So, as a friend pointed out in exasperation, I have posted a list in a list.
I’m highlighting this essay from the 2014 list. I kind of buried it at the end back then, but it’s one of several pieces by this author that felt essential, and that I still think about.
Probably more essential — deep-dives on the founding of the Black Lives Matter movement, published ~2015. Know this history
(and what it looked like locally)
And some history of previous anti-racist activism
In 2016, there was some necessary meditation on the emptiness of “love” as activism. This first essay hit me deeply; the second one had a cathartic anger. The third made me feel a true love
Overwhelmed? The brilliance of James Baldwin can be grounding; consider this interview from the summer of 1968:
If you are having “debates” that leave you drained and scrambled, this might help you see the bigger picture:
Essays on silence
It’s hard to think about cops. We hear about their individual acts of violence and their humanity, and also about the systems they build and are subject to. These helped me —
Miscellany
