Anti-Racism Resources

(Print Only)
“Part documentary, part lyric procedural,” wrote Dan Chiasson in the New Yorker of this book-length poem which won the 2014 National Book Critics’ Circle Award for Poetry. Haunting, personal, closely-observed, Rankine brings contemporary American racial politics into tight focus. “Because white men can’t/ police their imagination/ black men are dying." -Bazaar

(Print Only)
"The eruption of mass protests in the wake of the police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City have challenged the impunity with which officers of the law carry out violence against Black people and punctured the illusion of a postracial America. The Black Lives Matter movement has awakened a new generation of activists. In this is stirring and insightful analysis, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation." – Publisher

(Print and eBook)
"In the wake of the murder of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the exoneration of his killer, three black women activists launched a hashtag and social-media platform, Black Lives Matter, which would become the rubric for a larger movement. To many, especially those in the media, Black Lives Matter appeared to burst onto the national political landscape out of thin air. But as Barbara Ransby shows in Making All Black Lives Matter, the movement has roots in prison abolition, anti-police violence, black youth movements, and radical mobilizations across the country dating back at least a decade. Ransby interviewed more than a dozen of the movement's principal organizers and activists, and she provides a detailed review of its extensive coverage in mainstream and social media. Making All Black Lives Matter offers one of the first overviews of Black Lives Matter and explores the challenges and possible future for this growing and influential movement." -Publisher

(Print Only)
"Raised by a single mother in an impoverished neighborhood in Los Angeles, the author experienced firsthand the prejudice and persecution Black Americans endure at the hands of law enforcement. For the author, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. The author asserts that Black Americans have been targeted by a criminal justice system that serves a white privilege agenda, and are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin's killer went free, her outrage led her to co-found the Black Lives Matter movement with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, the women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who have turned a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of black and brown skin. Championing human rights in the face of violent racism, the author transformed personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering inequality, and forming a movement fueled by strength and love, to tell the country - and the world - that Black Lives Matter." -Publisher

(eBook Only)
"As police brutality and crime in mostly disadvantaged black communities have garnered significant attention, few studies have managed to capture the convergence of the two as a singular and yet dichotomous mobilization effort in a post-Ferguson milieu. In You Can't Stop the Revolution, sociologist Andrea S. Boyles provides a full ethnographic depiction of blacks fighting the victim blame and backlash of neighborhood violence while attending to highly charged, competing calls for action--tackling black citizen-police conflict and addressing disorder and crime in their often disproportionately poor communities. Drawing on momentum from civil unrest in Ferguson, Boyles offers an everyday montage of protests, social ties, and empowerment as coalescing to safeguard black lives while simultaneously igniting unprecedented twenty-first-century resistance" -Publisher

Summary: Music has always been integral to the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States, with songs such as Kendrick Lamar's "Alright," J. Cole's "Be Free," D'Angelo and the Vanguard's "The Charade," The Game's "Don't Shoot," Janelle Monae's "Hell You Talmbout," Usher's "Chains," and many others serving as unofficial anthems and soundtracks for members and allies of the movement. In this collection of critical studies, contributors draw from ethnographic research and personal encounters to illustrate how scholarly research of, approaches to, and teaching about the role of music in the Black Lives Matter movement can contribute to public awareness of the social, economic, political, scientific, and other forms of injustices in our society. Each chapter in Black Lives Matter and Music focuses on a particular case study, with the goal to inspire and facilitate productive dialogues among scholars, students, and the communities we study. From nuanced snapshots of how African American musical genres have flourished in different cities and the role of these genres in local activism, to explorations of musical pedagogy on the American college campus, readers will be challenged to think of how activism and social justice work might appear in American higher education and in academic research. Black Lives Matter and Music provokes us to examine how we teach, how we conduct research, and ultimately, how we should think about the ways that black struggle, liberation, and identity have evolved in the United States and around the world.