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Anti-Racism Reading List February 2025
10+ articles to support learning and advocacy action
Sharon Hurley Hall
February 26, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 10 minutes
Hello friends,
January was a long year for anyone affected by the flurry of activity from the dictator in the White House - and let's face it, with the position of the US on the global stage, those tentacles spread worldwide. As such, many of this month's articles focus on making sense of and resisting what's happening. There are also articles about racism in the UK and Canada. Let's dive in...
1. Dear Black People, It’s Time We Divest from The American Experiment by Louis Byrd
To kick us off this month, Louis Byrd reminds us of one aspect of the history of resistance during the Civil Rights movement in the US - divestment - and challenges Black Americans to do it again. And he warns that now, as then, the moves 47 and his cronies are making have but one goal:
“This is not about making America great again. It is about making America silent again, compliant again, blind again to its own contradictions. They are not trying to restore greatness; they are trying to restore the comfort of unchallenged power, the ease of unquestioned authority.”
2. Why Black Women Are Still Cringing At The Lean In Strategy by Camille Dundas
It's hard to lean in when you can barely get in; when the glass cliff is waiting for you, if you get that far. As this writer and her interviewees point out, this strategy often does NOT work for Black women in corporate, and even Sheryl's Sandberg's recent attempts to address this have fallen flat:
“Even when we are aware of the stats, do you think a Black woman is entirely comfortable leaning into them, when she’s just endured a weeks-long process of emotional tax to make it to the final interview? From shortening her name to make it more “pronouncable”, to worrying about her accent, or her hair. These are all the types of things most white women just do not ever have to worry about. They are part of the “double burden” Black women face in the corporate world.”
3. The Modern Tower of Babel and the Words That Divide Us by Diversity Nexus
File this one under "food for thought" (though I'm resisting any effort to redefine "woke" away from the original meaning). This author suggests a process for reaching a shared understanding of common terms so we can move forward. What do you think?
“If we don’t acknowledge how words like “woke,” “Black,” “ally,” or “community” have different, sometimes contradictory meanings to different people, we can’t build real connections.”
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