Strategies & Tools for Countering Bigotry Internally
- Review and update your institution’s values to reflect an inclusive culture and community that is sensitive to its most marginalized members, and promote those values publicly.
- Reflect racial/ethnic/religious diversity and equity in recruitment, hiring, and contracts.
- When implementing a policy, consider its impact on minorities in your institution.
- Adopt a calendar that includes diverse cultural, racial and religious holidays and commemorations.
- Celebrate diverse ethnic and religious holidays which reflect your staff.
- Avoid holding important meetings on religious or cultural holidays.
- Commemorate various heritage months such as Black History Month, Latinx Heritage Month, and Arab-American Heritage Month through events, emails, and newsletters.
- Provide incentives for staff to attend multicultural events.
- Create a place on your website and elsewhere to acknowledge events and campaigns such as “Stop Asian Hate.”
- Convene implicit bias trainings and cultural diversity education in your institution.
- Initiate cultural competency certification in your department through attending events, training, club memberships, etc.
- Convene a series of classes or lectures about specific communities that lead to certification or continued education credits.
- Initiate groups or clubs to discuss countering racism and convene conversations about the roots and impact of racism on various ethnic and religious groups.
- Incorporate examples from diverse cultures in your trainings, marketing, and elsewhere.
- Screen any resources that are culturally diverse with subject matter experts.
Strategies & Tools for Countering Bigotry Externally
- Partner with community groups who can educate how racism impacts them and how to counter it.
- Identify local groups or institutions that represent various cultures/groups and use them as resources.
- Translate website and other material into languages which represent the community.
- Create a multilingual phone system which reflects the population in your area.
- Help fund murals or other art projects to commemorate the history of marginalized communities.
- Highlight diverse voices and accomplishments by minority groups in your newsletters or other media.
- For administrators, it is important to engage with diverse communities:
- Research the specific history and impact of racism in your area.
- Participate in community events and get to know various communities.
- Listen to their concerns and cultural needs/preferences.
- Reach out to other institutions that have experience with diverse groups.
- Partner with schools, universities, and libraries to expand and coordinate multicultural programs.
- Hold an annual Cultural Diversity Event with stations representing culture and food from each group.
- Include European cultures since, except for Indigenous Peoples, we are all immigrants.
- Schools can convene a Multicultural Night with food, art, and entertainment from diverse cultures.
- Publicize ethnic businesses and utilize them for events.
- Stay informed about potentially oppressive laws and policies and how to challenge them.
- Keep abreast of current events that are affecting communities in your area and check in with communities experiencing bigotry or injustice, locally, nationally or internationally.
- Publicly denounce bigotry or injustice that occurs locally, nationally, or internationally in your public communications.
Readings and Resources (Developing List)
Articles
- “Speak Up!,” Learning for Justice: https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/publications/speak-up
- “How to Respond to Coronavirus Racism,” Learning for Justice: https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/how-to-respond-to-coronavirus-racism
- “Test Yourself for Hidden Bias,” Learning for Justice:https://www.learningforjustice.org/professional-development/test-yourself-for-hidden-bias
- “7 Ways We Know Systemic Racism Is Real,” Ben & Jerry’s: https://www.benjerry.com/home/whats-new/2016/systemic-racism-is-real
- “Social Identities and Systems of Oppression,” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/social-identities-and- systems-oppression
- “The Many Ways Institutional Racism Kills Black People,” Time: https://time.com/5851864/institutional-racism-america/
- “What it means to be anti-racist,” Vox: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/3/21278245/antiracist- racism-race-books-resources-antiracism
- “6 ways to be antiracist, because being ‘not racist’ isn’t enough,” Mashable: https://mashable.com/article/how-to-be-antiracist
- “Companies Try a New Approach to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Honest Conversations,” The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM): https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr- news/Pages/a-new-approach-to-diversity-equity-and-inclusion.aspx
- “How to Talk About Race with Your Employees,” SHRM: https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/tools-and-samples/exreq/pages/details.aspx?erid=1600
Websites
- “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine, 2019: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html
- “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” California Newsreel: https://www.racepowerofanillusion.org/
- “Anti-Racism Resources,” UNC: https://diversity.unc.edu/yourvoicematters/anti-racism-resources/
- “Talking About Race,” Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture: https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race
Books
- Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (Penguin, 2010)
- Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility (Beacon, 2018)
- Isabel Wilkerson, Caste, The Origin of Our Discontents (Random House, 2020)
- Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race (Basic Books, 2017)
- Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Ballantine, 1965)
- James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (Dial Press, 1963)
- Edward Said, Orientalism (Vintage, 1979)
- Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Vintage, 2006)
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (Harper, 2015; original publication 1980)
- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (Beacon, 2015)
Videos/Films
- “Institutional racism in US explained through a Michael Jackson song”, TRT, 2018: https://youtu.be/MdOCyqPcp2o
- “Who, Me? Biased?” video series, New York Times, 2016:
- “Peanut Butter, Jelly and Racism:” https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004818663/peanut-butter-jelly-and-racism.html
- “Check Our Bias to Wreck Our Bias”: https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004818668/check-our-bias-to-wreck-our-bias.html
- “The Life-Changing Magic of Hanging Out”: https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000004818671/the-life-changing-magic-of-hanging- out.html
- “Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvYzyqUdUfY
- “A Conversation with Richard Rothstein, Author of ‘The Color of Law’,” Silicon Valley at Home, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NjS-iPM0FM
- 500 Nations: The Story of Native Americans, 1995: https://documentaryheaven.com/500-nations- the-story-of-native-americans/
- The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, PBS, 2013
- Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation, PBS, 2013
- Exterminate All the Brutes (Raoul Peck), HBO, 2021
- I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck), 2016
- Selma (Ava DuVernay), 2014
- 13th (Ava DuVernay), Netflix, 2016
- Just Mercy (Destin Daniel Cretton), 2019
Podcasts
- Code Switch: www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch
- Ibram X. Kendi on the difference between “antiracist” and “not racist,” CBS This Morning: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ibram-kendi-talks-how-to-be-antiracist/
Community Organizations
- Islamic Networks Group: www.ing.org/
- Interfaith America: https://ifyc.org/interfaith-america
- Southern Poverty Law Center: www.splcenter.org/
- Not in Our Town: www.niot.org/
