Intercultural Speakers Bureau:
Calls to Action for Individuals to Counter Bigotry

Strategies & Tools for Countering Bigotry

• Address your own biases
  • Recognize that every human being has biases towards others.
  • Challenge your instinctive thoughts and assumptions.
  • Take initiative to overcome your biases, including those you may not know that you have.
  • Repeat these steps to make them habitual.
  • Be open to critical feedback:
    • Listen sincerely, apologize, avoid excuses, hold yourself accountable to a higher standard.
  • Strive for continuous learning and growth.
  • Continuously reflect on your own privilege and power.

• Be an Upstander (not a bystander):
  • Call out racism for what it is regardless of the intent.
  • Speak up when you hear or witness bigotry.
    • Don’t allow the critique that you are being overly sensitive prevent stop you.
    • Practice tailoring feedback, keeping in mind different backgrounds
    • Allow people time to process what you’ve shared.

• Check in with colleagues who are experiencing bullying/bigotry, whether directly or indirectly (if members of their community are experiencing bigotry or violence, this is also traumatic to them).
  • Ask if they need support and in what form, but be careful not to make assumptions

• Intentionally engage with people who are different from yourself.
  • Check cultural calendars of different ethnic and religious groups for their holidays or observances; look for public events and attend as many as you can.
  • Initiate contact if you don’t already have friends from different groups and work to build community among people across differences.

• Join community spaces to heal from the impact of bigotry if needed.

• Volunteer for community organizations that counter bigotry and join others in working to dismantle systems of oppression in your local area.

• Continue educating yourself about these topics (see below for readings and resources).

Readings and Resources (Developing List)

Articles

• “Speak Up!” Learning for Justice: https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/publications/speak-up

• “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: Social Identities and Systems of Oppression | National Museum of African American History and Culture

• “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/antiracistracism-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

Websites

• “The 1619 Project,” The New York Times Magazine, August 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:

• “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-nationsthe-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: https://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: https://www.ing.org

• Interfaith America: https://ifyc.org/interfaith-america

• Southern Poverty Law Center: https://www.splcenter.org

• Not in Our Town: https://www.niot.org/