A Conversation About Race
This guide was created to support the UT Libraries’ organizational read, which occurred during the 2019-2020 academic year. Many library staff and faculty read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo and participated in discussions about the concepts presented in the book. Library resources related to the book’s topics are included on this guide, from print and e-books to streaming media and DVD documentaries.
Books
DVDs
- Colorblind: The Rise of Post-Racial Politics and the Retreat from Racial Equity Tim Wise argues against colorblindness in the Obama era and argues for deeper color-consciousness in both public and private practice. We can only begin to move toward authentic social and economic equity through what Wise calls illuminated individualism - acknowledging the diverse identities that have shaped our perceptions, and the role that race continues to play in the maintenance of disparities between whites and people of color in the United States today.
- The Color of Fear A film about the pain and anguish that racism has caused in the lives of eight North American men of Asian, European, Latino, and African descent. Out of their confrontations and struggles to understand and trust each other emerges an emotional and insightful portrayal into the type of dialogue most of us fear, but hope will happen sometime in our lifetime.
- The Complete Blue Eyed with Jane Elliott Jane Elliott believes that white people won't act against racism until they have experienced it emotionally themselves,if only for a few hours in a controlled environment. The 'blue eyed/brown eyed' exercise was originally developed by Jane Elliott for her all-white 3rd grade class in Riceville, Iowa, at the time of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination to give them some idea of racial prejudice. She divided her class on the basis of eye color and subjected the blue-eyed members to a regime of intense discrimination. They soon cracked under the pressure, losing self-esteem and competence. The same exercise with the same devastating results has since been replicated hundreds of times in industry, higher education and public employment not just in this country but around the world
- Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible This film advances the argument that with transformative learning, a dialogue for learning, changing, healing, and undoing race-based oppression can begin. It features the experiences and stories of White women and men who are social justice advocates. They have worked to gain insight into what it means, as White people, to challenge notions of race, racism, culture and White identity development in the United States. Their shared reflections speak to the denial, defensiveness, guilt, fear and shame often related to these issues and show how these responses can be replaced with solid commitments towards racial justice.
Streaming Videos from the Libraries' Collection
- The Angry Eye This documentary shows Jane Elliott’s blue-eyed/brown-eyed experiment set in a college environment with students from diverse racial and ethnic environments.
- Color Adjustment This award-winning documentary from acclaimed filmmaker Marlon Riggs takes a close look at how network television absorbed deep-seated racial conflict and transformed it into the nonthreatening offerings of 20th-century primetime TV. Narrated by Ruby Dee, the film examines popular programs such as Amos 'n' Andy, I Spy, Julia, Good Times, Roots, and The Cosby Show, weaving clips from the shows with news coverage of the civil rights movement. Esther Rolle, Diahann Carroll, Tim Reid and other black performers discuss the impact their acting roles had in shaping race relations.
- A Conversation on Race: Black, White, or Other? When Washington Post journalist Lonnae O'Neal Parker wrote her controversial article "White Girl?" she struck a nerve-and opened a dialogue-with readers on both coasts. In this program, ABC News anchor Ted Koppel and correspondent John Donvan explore what it means to be black in America, assisted by Ms. Parker, her biracial cousin Kim McClaren, and Peggy Sakagawa, Caucasian wife of an Asian-American man. Lonnae's message? Being black today is still harder than most people imagine; the time is ripe to shed the racial armor and have a deep conversation that goes beyond platitudes and political correctness.
- Cracking the Codes: The System of Racial Inequity In the U.S., race --more than any other demographic factor-- determines levels of individual educational achievement, health and life expectancy, possibility of incarceration, and wealth. This film reveals a self-perpetuating system of inequity in which internal factors play out in external structures: institutions, policy and law. Designed for dialogue and learning, Cracking the codes : the system of racial inequity works to disentangle internal beliefs within, as it builds skills to recognize and address the external drivers of inequity.
- How Racism Harms White Americans Distinguished historian John H. Bracey Jr. offers a provocative analysis of the devastating economic, political, and social effects of racism on white Americans. In a departure from analyses of racism that have focused primarily on white power and privilege, Bracey trains his focus on the high price that white people, especially working class whites, have paid for more than two centuries of divisive race-based policies and attitudes. Whether he's discussing the pivotal role slavery played in the war for independence, the two million white Americans who died in a civil war fought over the question of slavery, or how business owners took advantage of the segregation of America's first labor unions and used low-wage, non-unionized black workers to undercut the bargaining power of white workers, Bracey's central point is that failing to acknowledge the centrality of race, and racism, to the American project not only minimizes the suffering of black people, but also blinds us to how white people have been harmed as well.
- I Am Not Your Negro Using James Baldwin's unfinished final manuscript, Remember This House, this documentary follows the lives and successive assassinations of three of the author's friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., delving into the legacy of these iconic figures and narrating historic events using Baldwin's original words and a flood of rich archival material. An up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, this film is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter.
- The Pathology of Privilege: Racism, White Denial, and the Costs of Inequality Tim Wise offers a unique, inside-out view of race and racism in America. Wise provides a non-confrontational explanation of white privilege and the damage it does not only to people of color, but to white people as well. This is an introduction to the social construction of racial identities, and a new tool for exploring the often invoked--but seldom explained--concept of white privilege.
- A Race is a Nice Thing to Have In this film, Allen E. Ivey interviews Janet E. Helms on her involvement in the multicultural and social justice movements. Her principal contribution is to help people think beyond racial or ethnic categories. The chief objective of her work is to assist people with identifying how assigning people to categories can lead to psychological constructs that have profound implications for their psychology and quality of life.
- The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow offers the first comprehensive look at race relations in America between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. This definitive four-part series documents a brutal and oppressive era rooted in the growing refusal of many Southern states to grant slaves freed in the Civil War equal rights with whites. A life of crushing limitation for Southern Blacks, defined by legal segregation known as "Jim Crow" - after a minstrel routine in which whites painted their faces black - shaped the social, political and legal history of the period. In 1954, with the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, the Jim Crow laws and way of life began to fall.. The story of the struggle during Jim Crow is told through the eyes of those who experienced it. Some are historical figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Ida B. Wells and Walter White. Others are everyday local heroes like William Holtzclaw, Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Ned Cobb, "Pap" Singleton and Barbara Johns.
- Skin Deep : Race and Ethnicity on Campus This film chronicles the eye-opening journey of a diverse and divided group of college students as they awkwardly but honestly confront each other's racial prejudices. Academy Award nominated filmmaker Frances Reid follows students from the University of Massachusetts, Texas A&M, Chico State, and U. C. Berkeley to a challenging racial awareness workshop where they confront each other's innermost feelings about race and ethnicity. She also accompanies them back to their campuses and on visits home in an attempt to understand why they think the way they do.
- Tim Wise : On White Privilege or years, acclaimed author and speaker Tim Wise has been electrifying audiences on the college lecture circuit with his deeply personal take on whiteness and white privilege. In this spellbinding lecture, the author of White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son offers a unique, inside-out view of race and racism in America. Expertly overcoming the defensiveness that often surrounds these issues, Wise provides a non-confrontational explanation of white privilege and the damage it does not only to people of color, but to white people as well. This is an invaluable classroom resource: an ideal introduction to the social construction of racial identities, and a critical new tool for exploring the often invoked - but seldom explained - concept of white privilege.
- What Does It Mean to be White?: The Invisible Whiteness of Being Through a series of interviews, Dr. Derald Wing Sue defines white privilege and uses examples to indicate how white privilege serves to keep Whites relatively oblivious to the opposite effect this has on persons of color.
- White Like Me : Race, Racism & White Privilege in America Racism is a problem that has been re-occurring throughout United States history. In this documentary Tim Wise highlights some main points. Viewers will learn what white privilege is, the history of racism, racism today, and reverse discrimination. Tim Wise reveals to us facts and examples of this ongoing problem.
- White Privilege How do mental health professionals work toward multicultural competence? One place to start is to begin the process of self-awareness, particularly in the area of socially privileged identities. In this ground-breaking series, Lew Schlosser interviews psychologists with expertise in six key areas of privilege: White, Heterosexual, Christian, Ability, Male and Social Class. In addition to learning how to personally connect with one's own socially privileged identities, students and professionals of all ethnicities and races will learn how privilege manifests itself in everyday life, how it affects the therapeutic process, and how we can take steps to dismantle privilege. Thought-provoking and insightful, this video is sure to spark discussion and even debate in class. This video brings the power of often missed multicultural issues to the center of our practice.
- White Racial Identity Development This video is part of a series that focuses on an examination of the factors that can adversely impact counseling. Because counseling does not take place in a vacuum, isolated from the larger sociopolitical influences of society, the practitioner needs to be alert to the danger of adopting the racial and cultural biases of their forebears. Topics discussed include avoidance of ethnocentric viewpoints, and developing the ability to understand the worldviews of other races, ethnic groups, cultures, genders, and classes, in order to understand the client within his/her context.