MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

by W. E. B. Du Bois

The Souls of Black Folk is a seminal work of American literature penned by W.E.B. Du Bois in 1903. Through a collection of insightful essays, Du Bois delves into the complex issues of race, identity, and equality in post-Civil War America. His profound analysis explores the double consciousness experienced by Black individuals, the challenges of racial discrimination, and the enduring quest for justice and liberation. With eloquence and depth, Du Bois's work continues to resonate today, offering readers a timeless reflection on the African American experience and the ongoing struggle for civil rights.

Publisher? 1903. 189p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Jody David Armour

In this groundbreaking book, "Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism: The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America," author delves deep into the complexities of the Black experience in a country where racism continues to shape social, economic, and political realities. Through meticulous research and powerful personal anecdotes, the author sheds light on the insidious nature of Negrophobia and the concept of "reasonable racism," illustrating the profound impacts these phenomena have on the daily lives of Black individuals and communities. This poignant and thought-provoking work challenges readers to confront uncomfortable truths and reexamine their own perspectives on race and privilege in America.

New York and London. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS. 1997. 210p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

By W.E.B. DU BOIS

Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil is a compelling anthology that delves into the depths of the human experience through a collection of haunting narratives. Each story in this book is a testament to the resilience, struggles, and triumphs of individuals who have navigated the complexities of life shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. From tales of love and loss to explorations of identity and belonging, these voices from within the veil invite readers to ponder the complexities of the human soul and the intricate web of connections that bind us all. Darkwater is a poignant and thought-provoking journey that will resonate with readers long after they turn the final page.

Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1920, 276 pages

By David H. Chae dchae@tulane.edu, Tiffany Yip, and Thomas A. LaVeist

Objectives

Experiences of vicarious racism—hearing about racism directed toward one’s racial group or racist acts committed against other racial group members—and vigilance about racial discrimination have been salient during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examined vicarious racism and vigilance in relation to symptoms of depression and anxiety among Asian and Black Americans.

Methods

We used data from a cross-sectional study of 604 Asian American and 844 Black American adults aged ≥18 in the United States recruited from 5 US cities from May 21 through July 15, 2020. Multivariable linear regression models examined levels of depression and anxiety by self-reported vicarious racism and vigilance.

Results

Controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, among both Asian and Black Americans, greater self-reported vicarious racism was associated with more symptoms of depression (Asian: β = 1.92 [95% CI, 0.97-2.87]; Black: β = 1.72 [95% CI, 0.95-2.49]) and anxiety (Asian: β = 2.40 [95% CI, 1.48-3.32]; Black: β = 1.98 [95% CI, 1.17-2.78]). Vigilance was also positively related to symptoms of depression (Asian: β = 1.54 [95% CI, 0.58-2.50]; Black: β = 0.90 [95% CI, 0.12-1.67]) and anxiety (Asian: β = 1.98 [95% CI, 1.05-2.91]; Black: β = 1.64 [95% CI, 0.82-2.45]).

Conclusions

Mental health problems are a pressing concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from our study suggest that heightened racist sentiment, harassment, and violence against Asian and Black Americans contribute to increased risk of depression and anxiety via vicarious racism and vigilance. Public health efforts during this period should address endemic racism as well as COVID-19.

Public Health Reports Volume 136, Issue 4, July/August 2021, Pages 508-517

By Julien Bellaiche

On 2 August 2023, a federal jury sentenced Robert Gregory Bowers to death for committing the deadliest antisemitic attack in the history of the United States. Five years earlier, on 27 October 2018, he entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire on worshippers who had gathered to celebrate Shabbat, one of the most important ritual observances in Judaism. Eleven people were killed and seven more injured.

While in custody, Bowers reportedly expressed demographic conspiracy beliefs to explain his act. These narratives claim that ethnic, religious or national groups are under threat of eradication by outsiders due to demographic changes resulting from plots instigated by diverse sets of actors.

This report examines the ideological underpinnings of the Pittsburgh synagogue attack and its long-term impact on the extreme right five years later. It does so by delving into the key narratives that motivated Bowers’ act and assessing their influence on subsequent attacks and plots. It then investigates the ways in which the attack and the attacker continue to be referenced and glorified in extreme-right communities online.

Key Findings

This report traces the history of demographic conspiracy theories in the far right in the West back to the 19th and early 20th centuries, when French discourses of “replacement” resonated with fears of miscegenation in the United States. These discourses shaped alternately the figures of Jews, Muslims, immigrants and progressive forces as racialised collectives plotting the eradication of White people and/or Western cultures. Over a number of years, these discursive trends interlaced and merged to produce labelled demographic conspiracy theories, which are known today under various names such as the “White Genocide” and the “Great Replacement” theories.

An analysis of Bowers’ activity on the social media platform Gab highlights the role demographic conspiracy theories played in Bowers’ interpretations and representations of social realities. These narratives helped shape the image of Jews as enablers of an alleged invasion of migrants endangering the future of White people.

In the context of White supremacist attacks, Bowers’ influence is linked to broader conspiracy beliefs that view the alleged struggle for the survival of the “White race” against concerted annihilation attempts as central. Other attackers who cited Bowers as a role model displayed various demographic conspiracy beliefs, picked different targets, but praised one another as committed “ethno-soldiers” sacrificing themselves for the cause of preserving the “White race”.

Despite his relatively modest popularity, Bowers remains regularly commemorated and glorified within extreme-right communities online five years later. “Screw your optics, I’m going in”, his last words on Gab, turned into a popular slogan used as a catchphrase to incite violence. Bowers was also introduced into militant accelerationists’ pantheon of “saints” and was regularly promoted as a holy figure within these online communities.

London: King’s College London , Washington, DC: George Washington University, Program on Extremism,. 2023. 48p.

By Kiana Cox And Khadijah Edwards

Many say key U.S. institutions should be rebuilt to ensure fair treatment. More than a year after the murder of George Floyd and the national protests, debate and political promises that ensued, 65% of Black Americans say the increased national attention on racial inequality has not led to changes that improved their lives.1 And 44% say equality for Black people in the United States is not likely to be achieved, according to newly released findings from an October 2021 survey of Black Americans by Pew Research Center.

This is somewhat of a reversal in views from September 2020, when half of Black adults said the increased national focus on issues of race would lead to major policy changes to address racial inequality in the country and 56% expected changes that would make their lives better.

At the same time, many Black Americans are concerned about racial discrimination and its impact. Roughly eight-in-ten say they have personally experienced discrimination because of their race or ethnicity (79%), and most also say discrimination is the main reason many Black people cannot get ahead (68%).

Even so, Black Americans have a clear vision for how to achieve change when it comes to racial inequality. This includes support for significant reforms to or complete overhauls of several U.S. institutions to ensure fair treatment, particularly the criminal justice system; political engagement, primarily in the form of voting; support for Black businesses to advance Black communities; and reparations in the forms of educational, business and homeownership assistance. Yet alongside their assessments of inequality and ideas about progress exists pessimism about whether U.S. society and its institutions will change in ways that would reduce racism.

These findings emerge from an extensive Pew Research Center survey of 3,912 Black Americans conducted online Oct. 4-17, 2021. The survey explores how Black Americans assess their position in U.S. society and their ideas about social change. Overall, Black Americans are clear on what they think the problems are facing the country and how to remedy them. However, they are skeptical that meaningful changes will take place in their lifetime.

Black Americans see racism in our laws as a big problem and discrimination as a roadblock to progress

WASHINGTON DC: PEW RESEARCH CENTER,

By Katie Zafft, et al.

In September 2022, the City of Duluth, with input from Duluth’s Racial Bias Audit Team (RBAT), contracted with the Crime and Justice Institute (CJI) to conduct a racial bias audit of the Duluth Police Department (DPD). CJI collaborated with the community and the Department to provide a holistic and comprehensive assessment of Department operations and interactions with the community with respect to the concerns raised about racial and ethnic disparities in police practices and operations. The scope of the audit largely reflects the status of the Department and experiences of community members within the past five years. Assessments of policies and trainings mainly represent the most recent versions of materials unless the audit team was provided materials that were previously used. The City/RBAT identified the following project scope in their request for services: • “Assess, monitor, and assist the DPD in concert with the community to uncover any aspects of implicit bias, as well as systemic and individual racial bias. • Assess the impact of enforcement operations on historically marginalized and discriminated against populations. • Provide recommendations for reforms that improve community-oriented policing practices, transparency, professionalism, non-discriminatory practices, accountability, community inclusion, effectiveness, equity and public trust. These recommendations should also consider statutory requirements, national best practices and current scientifically valid methodology, and community expectations. • Engage the community and employees of DPD to understand both experiences and expectations of interactions between both groups.”1 Assessment Goals and Objectives The scope of the audit, as directed by the audit goals developed by the Racial Bias Audit Team, focuses on eleven items that we consider to be three distinct areas of work: Department operations, Department interactions with the community, and the role of the Duluth Citizen Review Board (DCRB).

Boston: Crime and Justice Institute, 2023. 90p.

By Sarah J Jackson

It is clear in news coverage of recent uprisings for Black life that journalists and media organizations struggle to reconcile the fact of ongoing racism with narratives of U.S. progress. Bound up in this struggle is how collective memory-or rather whose collective memory-shapes the practices of news-making. Here I interrogate how television news shapes collective memory of Black activism through analysis of a unique moment when protests over police abuse of Black people became newsworthy simultaneous with widespread commemorations of the civil rights movement. I detail the complex terrain of nostalgia and misremembering that provides cover for moderate and conservative dele-gitimization of contemporary Black activism. At the same time, counter-memories, introduced most often by members of the Black public sphere, offer alternative, actionable, and comprehensive interpretations of Black protest.

Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 14, Issue 3, September 2021, Pages 385–404,

By Jae-hyung Kim, Kwi-byung Kwak, Il-hwan Kim, Hae-nam Park, Jun-chol So, Sang-jic Lee, Jong-sook Choi and Ji-hyun Choo

This article exposes human rights violations committed at Brothers Home in Busan, South Korea in the 1970s and 1980s, identifying their structural causes and discussing Korean society’s efforts to address them. From 1975 to 1987, Brothers Home was the largest group residential facility for the homeless, the ill, the disabled, and the poor—a program that was even commended by the Korean government. However, over the years, various human rights abuses led to the death of 657 residents. While these violations remained hidden from public view for almost 25 years, survivors and supporters waged a long battle to bring them to light. Recently, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated and confirmed the human rights violations as state violence . In this essay, the authors assess the significance this case holds for Korean society.

Asia-Pacific Journal (Japan Focus) Volume 21 | Issue 6 | Number 1 | Article ID 5775 | Jun 03, 2023

By Brendan Kennedy, Preni Golazizian, Jackson Trager, Mohammad Atari, Joe Hoover, Aida Mostafazadeh Davani, Morteza Dehghani

Humans use language toward hateful ends, inciting violence and genocide, intimidating and denigrating others based on their identity. Despite efforts to better address the language of hate in the public sphere, the psychological processes involved in hateful language remain unclear. In this work, we hypothesize that morality and hate are concomitant in language. In a series of studies, we find evidence in support of this hypothesis using language from a diverse array of contexts, including the use of hateful language in propaganda to inspire genocide (Study 1), hateful slurs as they occur in large text corpora across a multitude of languages (Study 2), and hate speech on social-media platforms (Study 3). In post hoc analyses focusing on particular moral concerns, we found that the type of moral content invoked through hate speech varied by context, with Purity language prominent in hateful propaganda and online hate speech and Loyalty language invoked in hateful slurs across languages. Our findings provide a new psychological lens for understanding hateful language and points to further research into the intersection of morality and hate, with practical implications for mitigating hateful rhetoric online.

PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2023,

By The United Nations with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Human Rights, Big Data and Technology Project at the University of Essex

Today social media has become another vehicle for hate speech, with the ability to spread information at a speed never seen before, reaching potentially huge audiences within a few seconds. The manner in which many platforms operate feeds on hateful and discriminatory content, and provides echo chambers for such narratives. Online hate speech has led to real world harm. We have seen this from incidents of identity based violence where the perpetrators were instigated through online hate, to its widespread use to dehumanize and attack entire populations on the basis of identity. Unfortunately, many times the victims are those already most marginalized in society, including ethnic, religious, national or racial minorities, refugees and migrants, women and men, sexual orientation and gender identity minorities.

New York: United Nations, 2023. 20p.

By C. Eric Lincoln. Foreword by Gordon Allport

FROM THE JACKET: “This is the first full study of the Black Muslims - an organization of more than 100,000 Negroes Who preach black autonomy, black supremacy, black union against the white world. The Black Muslim Movement has been characterized as melodramatic and extremist, but in chis book Dr. Lincoln shows that it is an accurate gauge of racial tension in the United States today. Behind an array of myths and ritual, behind an alleged tie to Islam, this new form of black nationalism reflects the American Negro's rising discontent with the way things are and his determination to change them.”

Boston. Beacon Press. 1961. 292p.

Edited by Nissa Finney, James Nazroo, Laia Bécares, Dharmi Kapadia and Natalie Shlomo

This book provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date evidence on ethnic inequalities in Britain. This is highly pertinent to contemporary social and political race debates and policy agendas in the post-pandemic recovery context. The COVID-19 pandemic brought ethnic inequalities to the fore as it became evident that infection and mortality rates were higher among ethnic minorities than the population as a whole (ICNARC, 2020; Nazroo and Bécares, 2020; ONS, 2020; Platt and Warwick, 2020). In May 2020, as the devastating and unequal impacts of the pandemic were being realised, the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota in the US saw a resurgence of Black Lives Matter (BLM) movements globally (Alexander and Byrne, 2020). In response, the UK government published the Sewell Report in 2021 which relayed the conclusions of the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, 2021), and, subsequently, the Inclusive Britain report in 2022 which laid out policy recommendations (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, 2022).

Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2023. 234p.

By Jonathan Hsy

How do marginalized communities across the globe use the medieval past to combat racism, educate the public, and create a just world? Jonathan Hsy advances urgent academic and public conversations about race and appropriations of the medieval past in popular culture and the arts. Examining poetry, fiction, journalism, and performances, Hsy shows how cultural icons such as Frederick Douglass, Wong Chin Foo, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, and Sui Sin Far reinvented medieval traditions to promote social change. Contemporary Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and multiracial artists embrace diverse pasts to build better futures. “Makes the crucial move of tying medievalism studies readings to social and racial justice work explicitly … innovative and greatly needed in the field.” Seeta Chaganti, author of Strange Footing “A major accomplishment that belongs on the shelves of every person who believes in antiracism.” Geraldine Heng, author of The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages

Leeds, UK:  Arc Humanities Press,, 2021. 180p.

By Tanya Dreher

This research monograph documents and analyses the many ways in which communities experiencing racism after September 11, 2001 have responded to increased prejudice, harassment and discrimination. While much research analyses the 'problem' of racism, this book highlights the responses developed by targeted communities, including strategies of Interfaith, cross-cultural education, media responses and community cultural development work. A follow-up to the 2006 work Targeted, the research underlying this book is based on extensive community consultations and interviews with Arab, Muslim and Sikh communities in Sydney. It maps the field and identifies common challenges with the aim of contributing to wider processes of innovation in community anti-racism work.

Broadway: UTS ePRESS, 2006. 47p.

By Elsa Bengtsson Meuller,

From the document: "Online abuse and extremism disproportionately target marginalised populations, particularly people of colour, women and transgender and non‐binary people. The core argument of this report focuses on the intersecting failure of Preventing and Counter Violent Extremism (P/CVE) policies and cybersecurity policies to centre the experiences and needs of victims and survivors of online extremism and abuse. In failing to do so, technology companies and states also fail to combat extremism. The practice of online abuse is gendered and racialised in its design and works to assert dominance through male supremacist logic. Online abuse is often used by extremist groups such as the far right, jihadist groups and misogynist incels. Yet online abuse is not seen as a 'threat of value' in cybersecurity policies. Additionally, the discipline of terrorism studies has failed to engage with the intersection of racism and misogyny properly. Consequently, we fail to centre marginalised victims in our responses to extremism and abuse. Through the implementation of a feminist theorisation of cybersecurity to tackle extremism, this report proposes three core shifts in our responses to online extremism: Incorporate misogynist and racist online abuse into our conceptions of extremism. Shift the focus from responding to attacks and violence to addressing structural violence online. Empower and centre victims and survivors of online abuse and extremism."

Global Network On Extremism And Technology (Gnet). 2023. 32p.

By Laura J. Feller

Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924 recodified the state’s long-standing racial hierarchy as a more rigid Black-white binary. Then, Virginia officials asserted that no Virginia Indians could be other than legally Black, given centuries of love and marriage across color lines. How indigenous peoples of Virginia resisted erasure and built their identities as Native Americans is the powerful story this book tells. Spanning a century of fraught history, Being Indigenous in Jim Crow Virginia describes the critical strategic work that tidewater Virginia Indians, descendants of the seventeenth-century Algonquian Powhatan chiefdom, undertook to sustain their Native identity in the face of deep racial hostility from segregationist officials, politicians, and institutions. Like other Southeastern Native groups living under Jim Crow regimes, tidewater Native groups and individuals fortified their communities by founding tribal organizations, churches, and schools; they displayed their Indianness in public performances; and they enlisted whites, including well-known ethnographers, to help them argue for their Native distinctness. Describing an arduous campaign marked by ingenuity, conviction, and perseverance, Laura J. Feller shows how these tidewater Native people drew on their shared histories as descendants of Powhatan peoples, and how they strengthened their bonds through living and marrying within clusters of Native Virginians, both on and off reservation lands. She also finds that, by at times excluding African Americans from Indian organizations and Native families, Virginian Indians themselves reinforced racial segregation while they built their own communities. Even as it paved the way to tribal recognition in Virginia, the tidewater Natives’ sustained efforts chronicled in this book demonstrate the fluidity, instability, and persistent destructive power of the construction of race in America.

Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, [2022] 275p.

By Joseph Litvak

In a bold rethinking of the Hollywood blacklist and McCarthyite America, Joseph Litvak reveals a political regime that did not end with the 1950s or even with the Cold War: a regime of compulsory sycophancy, in which the good citizen is an informer, ready to denounce anyone who will not play the part of the earnest, patriotic American. While many scholars have noted the anti-Semitism underlying the House Un-American Activities Committee’s (HUAC’s) anti-Communism, Litvak draws on the work of Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, Alain Badiou, and Max Horkheimer to show how the committee conflated Jewishness with what he calls “comic cosmopolitanism,” an intolerably seductive happiness, centered in Hollywood and New York, in show business and intellectual circles. He maintains that HUAC took the comic irreverence of the “uncooperative” witnesses as a crime against an American identity based on self-repudiation and the willingness to “name names”.

Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. 306p.

Edited by Felice Blake Paula Ioanide and Alison  Reed

"Antiracism Inc. traces the ways people along the political spectrum appropriate, incorporate, and neutralize antiracist discourses to perpetuate injustice. It also examines the ways organizers continue to struggle for racial justice in the context of such appropriations. Antiracism Inc. reveals how antiracist claims can be used to propagate racism, and what we can do about it. While related to colorblind, multicultural, and diversity discourses, the appropriation of antiracist rhetoric as a strategy for advancing neoliberal and neoconservative agendas is a unique phenomenon that requires careful interrogation and analysis. Those who co-opt antiracist language and practice do not necessarily deny racial difference, biases, or inequalities. Instead, by performing themselves conservatively as non-racists or liberally as ‘authentic’ antiracists, they purport to be aligned with racial justice even while advancing the logics and practices of systemic racism. Antiracism Inc. therefore considers new ways of struggling toward racial justice in a world that constantly steals and misuses radical ideas and practices. The collection focuses on people and methods that do not seek inclusion in the hierarchical order of gendered racial capitalism. Rather, the collection focuses on aggrieved peoples who have always had to negotiate state violence and cultural erasure, but who work to build the worlds they envision. These collectivities seek to transform social structures and establish a new social warrant guided by what W.E.B. Du Bois called “abolition democracy,” a way of being and thinking that privileges people, mutual interdependence, and ecological harmony over individualist self-aggrandizement and profits. These aggrieved collectivities reshape social relations away from the violence and alienation inherent to gendered racial capitalism, and towards the well-being of the commons. Antiracism Inc. articulates methodologies that strive toward freedom dreams without imposing monolithic or authoritative definitions of resistance. Because power seeks to neutralize revolutionary action through incorporation as much as elimination, these freedom dreams, as well as the language used to articulate them, are constantly transformed through the critical and creative interventions stemming from the active engagement in liberation struggles."

Brooklyn, NY: Punctum Books, 2019. 382p.

By Frantz Fanon. Translated by Lamb Marksman. “.. it is Fanon the man, rather than the medical specialist or intellec­tual, who makes this book so hard to put down. His ideas and feelings fairly pour out...he became a fighter ancfa voice for the op­pressed, whom he also had the courage to warn: no religious or mystical attitude, no psychologi­cal ‘defense’ will enable the Negro to feel ‘secure’ or ‘himself’ until he is no longer the white man’s social and economic prey . . .”- Robert Coles, The New York Times Book Review

NY. Grove Press. 1967. 237p.