Black Lives Matter.
Full Stop.
The system is rigged against Black Americans and people of color, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Add sexual orientation and/or gender identity into the mix, and we’re staring at a system that boasts supposed equality but very much lacks equity. Black Americans are asked to survive in a system that is built to protect the interests of white people in power and boxes them out of obtaining generational wealth. Black Americans are nearly three times more likely to be killed by a police officer than their white counterparts and twice as likely as their Latinx counterparts to be killed by a police officer. In these encounters, Black Americans are more likely than white and Latinx individuals to be unarmed.
In the current pandemic, Black and minority Americans are more likely to be infected and die from COVID-19 due to housing and economic constraints stemming from systemic racism. Systemic racism is a factor that creates health disparities, which include higher pregnancy mortality rates in Black women due to limited access to care and inadequate monitoring of symptoms. In the list below, you will find the book Medical Apartheid, which specifically talks about the toll that Black bodies have endured in the pursuit of medical advancements that we enjoy today, especially modern obstetrics.
We’ve compiled a list of books and documentaries to help all of us confront the intricacies of this reality, since we cannot dismantle something effectively if we do not know how it works.
Books
- Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks
- Killing Rage: Ending Racism by bell hooks
- Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington
- The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein
- White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin J. DiAngelo
- Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde
- Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
- Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton
- Fearing the Black Body by Strings
- Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
Documentaries/Docuseries
- 13th
- Race Matters: America in Crisis
- I am Not Your Negro
- Crime + Punishment
- 3 ½ Minutes, 10 Bullets
- Whose Streets?
- The Klan: A Legacy of Hate in America
- Dark Girls
- Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise
- Reconstruction: America After the Civil War
- The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
Have a suggestion for useful material to add on this list? Email us at info at acciopolitics dot com.