Antiracist Toolkit, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

June 4, 2020

2020 has brought us the COVID-19 Pandemic, and its attendant rise in both anti-Asian racism and anti-immigrant actions. Socioeconomic inequities have been amplified by the disease and a host of public health policy failures, with the worst outcomes occurring in black and Latino communities. Then, with the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd among others, protesters have taken to the streets to proclaim “enough is enough” to anti-black police brutality and more broadly to systemic racism throughout American culture and institutions.

The Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies has an important role to play in the work that we all need to do to “strive to be ‘antiracist’ on a daily basis, to continually rededicate ourselves to the lifelong task of overcoming our country’s racist heritage,” in the words of the historian Ibram X. Kendi (“An Antiracist Reading List,” New York Times May 29, 2020).

Our department’s faculty, staff, and students would all benefit from engaging with the resources below. We need to educate ourselves about racism past and present. We need to understand the role of racism in the institution in which we work and study and in the communities in which we live. We need to examine the insidious effects of bias in our academic fields and in our classrooms, and do the work of acknowledging these forces to begin overcoming them. And we can start by understanding our own racism and privilege. This is not a quick or easy fix. It is in fact a “lifelong task.”

This list focus on three action areas: educating and assessing ourselves; examining and revising our work; and enacting change. It is a work in progress and all suggestions are welcome.

Educating and assessing ourselves

• READ: Ibram X. Kendi, How to Be an Antiracist (2019)
• READ: Robin J. DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018) – available as an ebook through the UNC library
• READ: essay by Garnett Cadogan, Walking While Black
• READ: essay by Audre Lorde, The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism
• READ novels:
  • Angie Thomas’s The Hate You Give (2017)
  • Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016)
  • Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2014)
  • Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987)
  • James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953)
  • Zora Neal Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
• LISTEN: Under the Blacklight (Video/Podcast from African American Policy Forum & Kimberlé Crenshaw)
• LISTEN: Code Switch podcast episode: A Decade of Watching Black People Die
• LISTEN: All episodes of podcast White Lies (NPR)
• LISTEN: All episodes of podcast The 1619 Project(New York Times)
• LISTEN: True stories from the Civil War podcast: Uncivil (Gimlet Media)
• WATCH: What Matters (Documentary video and narratives from Black Lives Matter)
• WATCH: 13th (Ava DuVernay’s examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country’s history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America)
• WATCH: White Privilege (Poem by Kyla Lacey)
• WATCH: 5 Tips for Being an Ally (Video by @Chescaleigh)
• WATCH: The Urgency of Intersectionality(2016 TED Talk by Kimberlé Crenshaw)
  
• WATCH: 60-Second Lectures on Racial Injustice: “This Isn’t for You” (by Jolyon Thomas, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Pennsylvania, a scholar of Japanese religion)
• WATCH: Japanese Studies Antiracist Pedagogy videos, University of Michigan
• WATCH: DAMES “Blackness in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies” Speaker Series videos

Examining and revising our work

• READ: Letters for Black Lives (crowdsourced, multilingual, and culturally-aware resources aimed at creating a space for open and honest conversations about racial justice, police violence, and anti-Blackness – includes letters in all languages taught in DAS)
• READ: Seeding Change: Solidarity Statements and Articles in Support of #BlackLivesMatter (A Center for Asian American Movement Building, San Francisco)
• READ: Anti-Asian Racism and COVID-19, by friend of the department Dr. Jennifer Ho, professor of ethnic studies and director of the Center for Humanities & the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder
• READ: How Asian Immigrants Learn Anti-Blackness From White Culture, And How To Stop It (Jezzika Chung, Huffpost, 2017)
• READ: Anti-blackness in Asian and Asian-American Communities (Elena Kuran, Northeastern University Political Review, 2018)
• READ: ‘Model Minority’ Myth Again Used As A Racial Wedge Between Asians And Blacks (Kat Chow, Code Switch, 2017)
• READ: Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness Across the Disciplines, ed. Kimberlé Crenshaw et al (University of California Press, 2019) – available as an ebook through the UNC library
• READ: FCHS Collective. 2021. “Feminist Critical Hindu Studies in Formation.” Religion Compass. (e12392): 1-13
• READ: Black and Asian American Feminist Solidarities: A Reading List
• READ: More than a Reading List: Challenging Anti-Black Racism in the Field of South Asian Religions
• READ: Rumya S. Putcha, “Yoga and White Public Space,” religions (2020): https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11120669
• WATCH: American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs
• WATCH: The Next American Revolution
• WATCH: Heartbeat of Struggle
• WATCH: “Chinese Virus”: Why Anti-Asian Racism is So Contagious, USC Race and Equity Center
• WATCH: COVID-19 Webinars with the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
• WATCH: Know Your Rights as a Protestor (Council on American-Islamic Relations)

Enacting change

• REVISE OUR COURSES: Anti-Racist Pedagogy Guide, USC Libraries
• REVISE OUR COURSES: The Race Institute for K-12 Educators Anti-Racism-Resources for Teachers
• REVISE OUR COURSES: Educational Resources on Arab American Civil Rights
• INTERVENE: “Show Up: Your Guide to Bystander Intervention,” (PDF), Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP)
• SUPPORT BLACK COMMUNITIES: 20+ Allyship Actions for Asians to Show Up for the Black Community Right Now (Michelle King, Medium)
• SUPPORT ASIAN COMMUNITIES: Asian People Are Being Targeted By Racist Attacks. Here’s How You Can Be An Ally (Josephine Harvey, Huffpost, 2020)
• TEACH: How to Respond to Coronavirus Racism (Teaching Tolerance)
• REBUILD THE UNIVERSITY: How Higher Ed Can Fight Racism: ‘Speak Up When It’s Hard’ (Chronicle of Higher Education)
• ENGAGE: Campaign Zero – 10 steps to end police brutality
• ENGAGE: find your local bail fund supporting protesters such as the Anti-Racist Activist Fund here in Chapel Hill.
• ENGAGE: The Bail Project
• ENGAGE: The LGBTQ Freedom Fund
• ENGAGE: The Black Trans Femmes in the Arts (BTFA) Collective
• ENGAGE: Stop AAPI HATE/Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council
• ENGAGE: Arab Resource and Organizing Center
• ENGAGE: Council on American-Islamic Relations
• ENGAGE: Palestine Legal
• ENGAGE: Jewish Voice for Peace, Triangle, NC
• SUPPORT/LISTEN/LEARN: UNC Black Student Movement
• READ AND WATCH MORE: https://www.racialequitytools.org/fundamentals/resource-lists/book-and-film-lists
• STRATEGIZE: https://www.racialequitytools.org/act/strategies

These resources were collected through suggestions from Department of Asian Studies faculty as well as a from a huge range of online lists and articles, including the following:

• The African American Policy Forum
• Anti-Racism Resources for White People
• Black Lives Matter
• The Chronicle of Higher Education
• Inside Higher Education
• Racial Equity Tools
• Resources for AAPI Solidarity Work
• Resources for Accountability and Actions for Black Lives
• Scaffolded Anti-Racist Resources
• Teen Vogue