Welcome to Section 1 of the Chancellor's 21-Day Anti-Racism Challenge. We are excited that you are committed to learning about the multifaceted Black experience and what steps you can take to help dismantle anti-Blackness.
Amid this global pandemic that has interrupted life as we know it, our nation finds itself reckoning with our history of anti-Blackness. Civil unrest has been raging since the tragic killings of George Floyd, Jr. and Breonna Taylor by police, and Ahmaud Arbery, by neighborhood vigilantes. Black transgender women continue to disproportionately die violent deaths, and rarely are their killers brought to justice. We've witnessed racially biased 9-1-1 calls to report Black people and people of color for their audacity to exist in public spaces and the "policing" of these communities in ways that harken to antebellum slave patrols1.
Anti-Blackness underpins many of the most prevalent issues impairing the Black community: the intractable impact of COVID-19, police brutality and the overcriminalization of Black people, environmental injustices, loss of generational wealth, and barriers to quality health care, education and economic opportunity, among others.
The resistance to a more equitable America has come to a head and we recognize that something must change. Change is doing the work, engaging in difficult conversations, with our defenses down, and asking ourselves--how did we get here?
DAY 1 - August 7
When one affirms that they are not racist, it does not absolve them from complicity in perpetuating racism. Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, esteemed professor and bestselling author, contends that "[there] is no neutrality in the racism struggle. The opposite of 'racist' isn't 'not racist.' It is 'anti-racist.'" In this interview for The Aspen Institute, Dr. Kendi discusses what it means to be an anti-racist.
WATCH or LISTEN: How To Be Anti-Racist (June 26, 2019 | 55 min)
DAY 2 - August 10
We are well aware that racism adversely impacts people of color--but has anyone considered the impact of white supremacy on white people? In the video, "Racism has a Cost for Everyone", Political commentator and strategist, Heather C. McGhee, shares the hidden cost of racism to our society.
WATCH, LISTEN or READ: Racism Has a Cost for Everyone (May 8, 2020 | 14 min)
Racism Has a Cost for Everyone Transcript (PDF)
We learned early on in the pandemic that communities of color are being ravaged by the novel conoronavirus, with the Black and Latinx communities faring the worst. Dr. Cheryl Anderson, professor and founding dean of The Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science at UC San Diego, speaks with KPBS to explain these extremities in "How Redlining Contributed to Health Disparities".
READ or LISTEN: How Redlining Contributed to Health Disparities (July 13, 2020 | 8 min)
How Redlining Contributed to Health Disparities (PDF)
The National Equity Project, an organization focused on education reform, teaches us in "Don’t Talk about Implicit Bias Without Talking about Structural Racism", that we cannot begin to dismantle the structural inequities in education without checking both our biases and the systemic barriers sustained by these biases.
READ: Don’t Talk about Implicit Bias Without Talking about Structural Racism (PDF) (June 13, 2019 | 12 min)
DAY 3 - August 11
What we're experiencing in America today--from social inequities and violence against Black people to our country's administration--stems from our nation's unwillingness to accept that we have cultivated this climate. In an MSNBC panel discussion, Dr. Eddie Glaude, Jr., distinguished professor at Princeton University, attempts to answer host Nicole Wallace's question, what now?
WATCH, LISTEN or READ: MSNBC: This Is Us (August 6, 2019 | 3 min)
Overcriminalization in the Black community has contributed to the disenfranchisement, scarcity of employment, economic hardship, housing insecurity, interruption to psychological well-being, wrongful incarceration and execution, and premature death of Black people in America2. In a video presentation produced by C-SPAN, Dennis Childs, associate professor of African American Literature at UC San Diego, discusses his book, Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary, which examines how the 13th Amendment succeeds in perpetuating modern day slavery.
WATCH or LISTEN: Slaves of the State (2016 | 13 min)
DAY 4 - August 12
We know race is a social construct, created to justify the power and privilege that is "whiteness" over those deemed to be "not white." It is also well documented in American history how European immigrants, from varying cultures, have gone from being marginalized to achieving "white status," while Black people are still striving to be equal. How do we begin to break through the ills of racism? In the video produced by Harvard Law with Bryan Stevenson, lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson speaks to our country's need to talk about racism.
WATCH or LISTEN: We Can't Recover From This History Until We Deal With It (January 30, 2019 | 6 min)
DAY 5 - August 13
The media continues to report on the protests for Black lives rippling throughout the country, with some news sources calling the Black Lives Matter movement the biggest movement in our nation's history3. While public ire and outcries in solidarity with the Black community are helpful in elevating these dire issues, support does not stop at protests and social media posts. Dr. Dayo Gore, associate professor of ethnic and critical gender studies at UC San Diego, speaks with ABC News 10 on what support looks like beyond words and marches.
WATCH, LISTEN or READ: Ways to Help Combat Racism: 'Your Apology is Not Enough' (June 1, 2020 | 5 min)
Ways to Help Combat Racism (PDF)
As we reflect back on everything we've read, watched, or listened to during this first week of the 21-day challenge, we come to understand from the research and data that the effects of anti-Black racism are real and deeply devastating. Despite it all, why is it still so hard for white people to talk about race? Dr. Robin DiAngelo seeks to explain this phenomenon in her article "White Fragility."
READ: White Fragility (2011 | 17 pgs | 51 min)